coming up on c-span three, a house panel looks at your sentence structure, and the need for a bipartisan congressional approach to passing an infrastructure bill. after that, supreme court justices samuel alito and keegan testify on the court's $90 million budget request for 2020. then the alabama state of the state address, by governor king iv. next, a house panel of investigating the need for u.s. infrastructure. the chair and ranking member for the committee testified on the need for congressional action, a bipartisan approach to passing an infrastructure bill. congressman richard neal chairs the hearing. >> good morning, and welcome to our witnesses and audience

members, and thank all of you for being here this morning. communities, as well as from experts on the systems that connect our communities, and fuel our economy. they will highlight the urgency with which we must adjust address our nation's infrastructure crisis. our infrastructure system used to be the envy of the world. now, due to decades of underfunding and neglect, it is falling apart, and we are falling behind our global competitors. the deficiencies of our roads, bridges, transit, water systems, broadband, and electrical grids are all well documented and widely known. this is a problematic reality for every single state and congressional district in the nation. in fact, the american society of civil engineers gave our country's infrastructure system a grade of d+.

they also would note that it would take up to $2 trillion of investment over 10 years, just to bring our grade up to a b. we face the largest infrastructure funding that gap in the world. america should not settle for anything less than world-class infrastructure. we need land, air, and water transport systems that move people and goods from point a to point b, efficiently, and at reasonable costs. we need systems that deliver reliable, sustainable, low cost power, and we need water systems that protect the public health. as we neglect to make basic repairs to our nation's infrastructure. other countries are charging ahead, and modernizing theirs. for example, china boasts more than 15,000 miles of high-speed rails with top speeds over 155 miles per hour. meanwhile, the fastest train in the united states has an average speed of 82 miles per hour. we are both figuratively and literally failing to keep pace with our global competitors.

everyone wins when we make meaningful sustained investments in the nations infrastructure. infrastructure development creates thousands of good paying jobs, for hard-working americans. from civil engineers and hydrologists, to truck drivers, and railcar repairs, infrastructure investment offers workers a wide range of skills and education levels, and those opportunities to come with it, to earn competitive wages. infrastructure investment is also a win for american business. our transport systems are the backbone of our economy. when we invest in infrastructure, it results in a significant economic multiplier, with each dollar spent, our nation becomes more competitive and more prosperous. what is good for the nation as a whole is good for our local communities. we must continue to reinvest and revitalize our urban neighborhoods and rural communities, successful programs like the low income housing tax credit.

i have been a longtime supporter of both of these initiatives because they have positive effects on our communities. the president campaigned on a massive infrastructure package, and he mentioned it again this year in his state of the union address. i have spoken personally, and met with secretary michie minh nguyen, and secretary chao, and they assured me we have partners. i think we have a real opportunity to work together and do something really big. with that, let me recognize the ranking member, mr. brady, for his opening statement. >> chairman, thank you for convening this hearing today. while too much time in congress is being wasted, and a rush to an impeachment of a new house majority, there is more urgent work to be done on the behalf of the american people. this is crucial for my state of texas, where we are experiencing strong economic growth, nearly half 1 million

new residents moving in, and increased cargo from our growing trade relationship with mexico, and other trading partners around the globe. it is also crucial for america, which thanks to our new million tax code, is enjoying economic growth today, nearly 50% higher than project projected two years ago. record low unemployment, the highest paycheck growth in more than a decade, especially for low and moderate income workers, and more job openings than unemployed. u.s. manufacturing is back, experiencing its best year in decades. and, all of this growth translates into a greater need for more roads, modern posts, expanded well rail and waterways, more pipe lies securing affordable energy to communities, the latest infrastructure in the rural and low income communities, and smart technology. stronger growth through better infrastructure is a priority to president donald trump and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. we are eager to work together with democratic friends on this

committee to send meaningful legislation this year. as we begin this work, we should also recognize the challenge. among them, the fact that our highway infrastructure program is too often a leaky bucket. with nearly 20% of funding diverted to non-highway uses. and all while vital projects are delayed for years, by mindnumbing state local and federal redtape, that drives up costs, and increases congestion. it is important that as we explore ways to find revenue to fill the infrastructure, we take concrete to fill these reads. so more money goes directly. that means doing more to bureaucratic red tape, and permitting delays, and removing unnecessary cost across all government. we are ready to sit down and roll up our sleeves to find common ground on rethinking the

process in accelerated infrastructure. that includes encouraging use of technology and innovative solution. we cannot overlook the private sector and infrastructure system. as we have seen in nearly every industry, and technology in healthcare, the ingenuity and imagination the private sector will always lead a better and more affordable and reliable product. i am also convinced we can redesign our infrastructure system to track for more private capital to help us address infrastructure need and for a nation that prizes free enterprise, we fall woefully behind other nations in attracting non-governments. it would be a mistake to fund infrastructure by raising taxes on local businesses and corporations. making them uncompetitive in the global market. in the effort to slow down waste growth for effort others, by putting local companies at a

disadvantage in this global economy, does not make economic sense, and will be opposed. as we promote and seek advances of new technologies and innovations, we must not simply throw money from dc's converse and -- this year we know the 10th anniversary of the 2009 stimulus bill. which i think we all acknowledge fails to address america's infrastructure, whether to support, that has learned from its lessons by assuring we do not waste taxpayers dollars, or rushing into projects without sufficient consideration, their efficiency in value. in closing, improving our nation's infrastructure is a priority we all share. i am optimistic we can reach a bipartisan consensus on how best to accomplish this. thank you chairman neil. >> thank you mr. brady. you are invited to continue if

you like while we wait for the two witnesses. so we will just take a bit of a temporary timeout. if there was better infrastructure, they would be here faster. we will now reconvene. we have two witness panels today. we begin with our member panel, and that we will move to our panel of outside experts and industry representatives. the first panel, i have the honor of welcoming to esteemed colleagues from our infrastructure committee. first we will hear from peer defazio. and he is the longest-serving house member in history. he was born and raised in massachusetts. he has been a champion on infrastructure issues throughout his career career. mr. graves represents the sixth district of missouri, and is a

small businessman and a six generation farmer. he is familiar with the impact of infrastructure and its investment on business. with that, mr. defazio, would you proceed? >> thank you mr. chairman, thank you for holding this long overdue hearing by the full committee on america's infrastructure needs, and the possibility of provisions to pay for it. sam and i can write a great bill in terms of policy. but, the bottom line is we need investments. today, if you look at federal spending, which we have not increased gas exit since 93, we have cut federal spending by 20% in real terms. the highway trust fund is running a $16 billion a year deficit in terms of the current revenues. so, we are borrowing $16 billion a year to backfill the highway trust fund.

you know, that still is not an adequate investment according to the american society of civil engineers of the next 10 years. we will be about $1 trillion short for service transportation needs. so, the needs are huge. 836 billion for unmet capital for highways and bridges, 50,000 bridges need substantial repair and replacement. 40% of the national highway system needs not just to be resurfaced, but to be rebuilt. and about $100 billion in terms of transit, that is just a brings things up to a state of good repair. that is not to get to a point where we are mitigating suggestion. and the cost of doing nothing are astronomical. you know, a couple of examples, brent bridge between ohio and kentucky, it is about a $3 billion project. it is going up by $100 million a year, every year we delay,

and the estimates are the current bridge will not be usable in 10 years. we have the tunnels under the hudson river gateway, and the portal bridge. those tunnels, went near failure during hurricane sandy. if they fail, the cost of the economy are $100 million a day. and if you wanted to build two new tunnels on an emergency basis, maybe it can get done in four years. so, you have now spent $140 billion of loss economic activity, because you wouldn't invest in a $16 billion project . business roundtable says we lose $27 billion per year in transportation costs, because of congestion, and delays. for drivers, people driving small vehicles, individual vehicles, they wasted 3.1 billion gallons of fuel stuck in traffic. and their annual repaired bill due to needing their cars

repaired averages $14 million. over the next 10 years, we will be a short 164 billion with current revenues. just to maintain the status quo which is an adequate. now, there is some proposing p threes, private public partnerships, i brought this report, i will email one to every member of the community committee. this was a bipartisan select committee of transportation five years ago, which came to the conclusion that p threes private public partnerships can address somewhere close to 10 to 12% of our needs, because much of the system cannot make money. so, you cannot engage the private sector in doing this project. similarly, an

infrastructure bank which symbols they will solve all the problems, we have private activity bonds, we have loans, we could put more money into those programs. you could create an infrastructure bank, but that is only going to lend itself to things that have revenue. you can toll some of the bridges, but there is no transit system in the world that makes money. most of the highways we are talking about do not carry volumes that are adequate, even if you told them. and many of those bridges, same thing. we need real federal investment. others say let's go to a bmt. well, we are not ready to jump to a vehicle miles traveled. i would like to do a nationwide pilot program. my state is on his second pilot, there are a lot of issues with vmt, vehicle miles traveled travel. if you can do it fairly, you have to do it with real-time pricing and congestion pricing. someone who drives 25 models miles is not contributing to the deterioration or congestion. they should not be the same per

mile fee, there is a little bit of concern among people can take particularly in rural areas. if we do a nationwide pilot in 10 or 12 years, we will be ready to move there. i have proposed something de minimis, because people are afraid of the gas tax, although more than half the states have raised the gas tax. many of those are substantial increases. i said okay, anybody think you are going to lose your election if glass goes up one and a half cents a gallon. so, i have pity for progress, index to gas and diesel tax. and then bond, the projected income. you can issue bonds for 13 years. fill in the hole to try to grade another 17 billion a year for a needed backlogged spending . it creates a cliff out there,

a decade or so. but in a decade or so we will have much higher penetration of electric vehicles, and we will need to move to vehicle miles traveled in order to have a system equitable. with that, i hope that this committee will take substantial action to raise revenues. there is a provision in the current gas tax. we could do nothing, and if you raise revenues, they will flow through it the existing formulas. if the money was there today, the states would have the money tomorrow under existing formulas, and would contract. there are some changes we would like to make in some provisions in a short-term bill. but, generally that is the bottom line. you put up the money, it will get done. >> we thank you for your institutional knowledge on these issues. >> thank you to the committee. i appreciate you holding this hearing to focus on how we are going to fund our infrastructure

now and in the future. i think we have a real opportunity to address a lot of questions, which is improving our infrastructure, creating jobs, and strengthening the economy. there is widespread agreement within the house, within the senate, the white house. we do need to act. we saw the president urging congress to send him a bipartisan infrastructure piece of legislation that he can find. most importantly, i think all of our constituents want this as well. chairman defazio and i are eager to do our part. last month, our committee held its first hearing. we heard from numerous stakeholders about our infrastructure needs. the chairman and i have been talking about how we can move forward in infrastructure bills . we both stand ready. as he pointed out, we can write a bill right now. we obviously can work with your committee. we have had a very good working relationship with your committee in being able to do something

like this. >> the federal government has long played a leading role in infrastructure investment. we need to continue that role as we serve as a reliable partner to the state and local governments. today, as you consider how to ensure robust infrastructure investment, i want to outline my priorities and some challenges. in order to launch our infrastructure into the 21st century, i believe we need to do a better job of incorporating advancements in technology. if we can tap into this potential technology can make our infrastructure much safer. and, much less costly, and improve the efficiency of the network that we have. furthermore, continuing to streamline the project delivery process is going to help ensure we have the most out of our federal funding. it is going to expedite the necessary improvements, that we need, and you all know this, the time is money.

the biggest elephant in the room, as it has been pointed out, when it comes to surface transportation investment, is going to be fixing the highway trust fund, and ensuring it is sustainable for the future. as the chairman pointed out, i think all options are on the table. the fact is, the highway trust fund will continue to face shortfalls in the coming years. $16 billion annually to give you just a little bit of a rough sense of things. our gas tax and diesel taxes have historically served as very efficient mechanisms for sustaining the trust fund. they simply aren't going to meet our future needs. the situation will get worse, as cars, buses, and our truck fleet become more fuel- efficient, and hybrids, and obviously electric vehicles become more popular. to be frank, the gas tax is not a long-term solution. we have to decide to address the long-term solid. it is

going to take significant political capital to accomplish our shared goal. the same is true for the internal fix as well. we will spend that political capital, we have got to focus on the long-term in my opinion. and, the most promising long- term solution is vmt as it has been mentioned. vmt has the potential to be a true user funded program that captures everyone and gets the highway trust fund back to where it needs to be to maintain our network and improve it. like any resolution, there are challenges with that. for instance privacy is a big concern with many of our colleagues. the question about whether or not vmt is fair, to both rural and urban drivers has been raised. answering these questions are important to getting by in on the vmt program. i can show you, they are being addressed in a quantifiable way

by multiple states that are actively testing vmt. most recently a completed city in washington state provided very good insight into some of the commonly raised concerns, showing real drivers are expected to benefit better under vmt and the gas tax. it has been pointed out by the chairman that we can't come up with an adjustment, and that pilot also showed that the long- term vmt outperforms the state's $.49 gas tax which is the third highest in the nation. the fact is that pilot programs in multiple states are successfully exploring these and many other issues with the vmt, including different collection mechanisms to guard a driver's privacy, and not everything has to be gps as some might assume. we are not talking about tracking. we are talking about doing

something in a much simpler way. we can put in place a national framework for vmt, with the goal of providing a stable, truly long-term solution that we desperately need for the highway trust fund. solutions for the trust fund and our infrastructure will require building consensus of the taxpayers dollars. we have a long history of working together, and i look forward to continuing that relationship to accomplish something great for the american people and the economy. as i mentioned, again, everything is on the table. we are open to whatever you all put forth. again, if we are going to spend that political capital, it is going to take political capital to get something done. my belief is we go ahead and do it now, rather than doing something that we are going to have to come right back around

and fix later. we do have more and more efficient vehicles, and more and more vehicles on the road that simply are not paying for the use of that road. with that, i appreciate the opportunity for both of us to testify today, and i look forward to hearing from -- >> thank you ranking member graves. and on a respect your schedules and best practice, we will not ask you to stay for questioning. i thank you both for appearing from in front of us today, and i look forward to continuing the conversation. the committee has received a written statement. you have five days to make adjustments. with that, thank the two of you. we will now have our second panel. we will give them a moment to take their seats.

. >> for our second panel we had a this symbol for our second panel, we have is establish witnesses that view our prices from different perspectives. first i would like to welcome richard, he represents 12.5

million members advocating to ensure that all workers have a good job and the power to determine wages and working conditions. next is tom, president and ceo of the united states chamber of commerce, having served in his position since 1997. he has spearheaded the chamber's efforts to rebuild america's infrastructure. greg d loretto, who is president of the american society of civil engineers and currently is the chair of the committee for american infrastructure. chris spear is president and ceo of the american trucking associations. mr. spear also serves on the board of directors for the american transportation research institute. the federal advisory committee and autonomous technology, and the northwestern university transportation center and its advisory council and its congressional award -- and finally mr. mark scribner is a senior fellow at the competitive enterprise institute. his research focuses on transportation, land use and

urban growth policy issues. each of your statements will be made part of a record in its entirety. i ask that you summarize your testimony in 5 minutes or less. to help you with that, there is timing on your table. when you have 1 minute left, the light will switch from green to yellow, and to read. would you please proceed mr. trumka? >> thank you mr. chairman and ranking member brady and members of the committee. i appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today. as you noted, the cio is the american labels -- represented 12 1/2 million workers across the country. let me start by saying it is an honor to address you today, while an honor, it is also quite frustrating because despite widespread cause to act from business and labor, and those who rely on our infrastructure every single day , after all the studies and reports outlining this urgent crisis, no meaningful action

has been taken to correct decades of chronic underinvestment. so mr. chairman, i do find it encouraging that you are holding this important hearing. the fact is, our nation used to pride itself on our ability to create a better, brighter, and more prosperous future by investing in our infrastructure. our parents and grandparents did not pass the buck, they rolled up their sleeves, and they went to work. we can do that, too. we can create millions of good jobs, increase long-term growth, maintain our position as leaders of the global economy, and improve working people's lives and livelihood. the afl-cio and our affiliates have long since supported substantial long-term infrastructure investment plans. i want to walk you through four key reasons why we keep doing our part to help congress get there. first, infrastructure

investments create good jobs and career paths that can support a family, a child's education, a secure retirement, and a middle-class life. to that end, infrastructure packages must maintain long- standing federal policies that support working people with high labor standards and good jobs. second, infrastructure investment spurs economic growth. studies have shown that for every dollar of infrastructure investment creates more than 3 dollars of gross, making it one of the greatest economic multipliers of the federal government's disposal. new rail and transit terminals are followed by housing and businesses that sprout up around them. these types of transportation investments help workers find employment opportunities that may have been previously inaccessible. third, if we want to be a nation that continues leading

the way in the global economy, we have to build before we look into infrastructure. we cannot afford to fall further behind our competitors. above all else, infrastructure investment is a vital, long- term, national necessity that will determine what kind of country we will be decades from now. lastly, investing in infrastructure improves the quality of life for all working people. take the simple act of commuting to work each day, the average driver now spends an extra 97 hours a year on the road due to congestion. precious time that could have been spent with family, friends, or earning a few extra dollars. lost time and wasted fuel is costing commuters more than $1300 a year, while adding unnecessary admissions to our atmosphere, plus they endure on average $600 of damage to their

car each year. the cost of inaction is being felt far and wide, and it poses significant risks to our country. even projects of critical national security, national significance, are being neglect. a couple of examples, the gateway tunnel, the existing 100 year tunnel that connects the entire northeast region under the hudson river has been in need of expansion for 25 years. every day, our members move 800,000 passengers through the labyrinth of outdated infrastructure. it will cost our economy 100 million dollars a day. the sue locks in michigan, only one functioning lock, built in 1896 that can handle modern vessels. the u.s. army corps of engineers calls it the achilles' heel of the industrial economy. which, if failed, will result

in the economic loss of 1.1 trillion and 11 million jobs. the highway trust fund is facing an urgent and dire funding cliff, that needs media attention. the gas uses fees which funds the trust fund, and needs to be adjusted. mr. chairman, i know my time is up, i would just say that the people of america cannot afford to wait any longer. we need to act, we need to act now. >> thank you mr. trumka. with that, mr. donahoo, would you proceed? >>, very much mr. chairman and ranking member and others. you know as richard just said, we have been here before. we are going to keep coming, we are determined to get this done, and in our judgment, it can only be done in a bipartisan way. that spirit i urge the members

of this community committee to find a common cause on this national priority, just as business and labor have. the stakes are high for all of us. our long-term competitiveness and lasting prosperity is critical, and the businesses that u.s. chamber representatives depend on it, and are willing to support a vigorous program. just today we released our quarterly small business index, which found that crumbling infrastructure is a significant roadblock, standing in the way of american small business. the majority of respondents told us that hide where local roads and bridges are critical to their success. and, 62% said about the local surface infrastructure is average at best built in bad

quality of most places. the chamber has outlined a four- point plan that addresses the essentials. how to get projects approved in a timely manner. who does the work, and how to pay for it. dedicated funding systems, trust funds, federal loans, and grants, and private resources should all be leveraged to upgrade core infrastructure. there is $100 billion in private global capital that we know is available to be a part of this effort, and we have to find ways to motivate it and get it there. my written testimony discusses all of these ideas. for the balance of my time, i would like to talk about the elephant in the room. i want to talk about a gas tax. the federal gas tax which funds highway and transit programs is a flat 18.4%, the same as it was in 1993. how many people in this room

can live off the same paycheck they had in 1993? no one. our nations roads and residents bridges, and transit systems cannot either. the congressional budget office estimates that $150 billion is and additional revenue is necessary, just to carry on the program until 2025, that is in place. that is why the chamber advocates raising the gas tax, by $.25, which would generate just about 400 billion over the next 10 were 10 years, which would give us some of the money we need for roads, bridges, and transit. understand that much of this increase would be paid by business. truckers for example, who will speak for themselves, will bear a large portion of this cost. they are already taking care of these costs on the infrastructure side, and will

do more. this is a well understood question outside washington, that is why i am glad you are getting so many people to talk about that. and, i have always said the chamber is open to any ideas that will help us it there. and, we both believe that. we are even hosting a constitution competition. the chamber members pay the cost of this in action, we are ready to step up and do what is needed, and i ask your support in getting, going forward on this before, and as richard said and others will say, we go sermon so much further, that the bridge where we need to go is so big and so long, that we will not be able to afford it. thank you very much. >> thank you mr. donahoo. let me recognize mr. day loretto to begin his testimony.

>> thank you chairman. thank you for the opportunity to discuss the need to invest in america's infrastructure. i am greg d loredo, the past president of the current chair of ansi's committee on american infrastructure. i am a retired chief executive of a large water utility. afc is the oldest national engineering society. we represent over 150,000 civil engineers. every four years since 1998, a sce has graded 16 major categories of infrastructure, and needless to say, a sce's first infrastructure report card, the grades have not been want to make us proud. we have yet to give an overall grade, and that remains true of our 2017 infrastructure report card. our cumulative gpa is once again a d+. and that d+ represents a significant backlog need, facing our nation's infrastructure.

we built our current day infrastructure. like a roof on a house that you neglect to maintain, our systems are showing wear and tear, they have sprung leaks, they have become less reliable. let's take the water sector. there is an estimate a water main break every 2 minutes in this country, wasting 2 trillion gallons of drinking water, that is enough to fill the empire state building 7000 times. we also depend on a network of roads and bridges that were envisioned and built during the eisenhower era 44% of the nations major roads are in poor or mediocre condition. driving on those roads is costing motorists over $600 a year in vehicle repair and operating costs. then there is congestion, 45% of americans urban interstate -- on average, americans weighs between 40 and 120 hours of an congestion. that is the equivalent of your

123 week vacation, just stuck on the interstate. rush hour is now rush hours. we spent 170 billion a year in wasted time and feel. meanwhile, congestion at airports is growing. it is expected that 24 of the top 30 airports may soon experience thanksgiving day peak volume at least one day every week. in short, the grades and conditions of our infrastructure is the cause for concern. it reflects the fact that america's infrastructure bill is long overdue. we estimate that the investment gap over the next 10 years is just over $2 trillion. in other words, we need to be spending another 200 billion a year to bring our networks back into a state of good repair. just over half of that staff is in transportation. closing this brings economic consequences. if we do not address the infrastructure gap by 2025, we can expect to see a loss of $3.9 trillion to our gross domestic product, that is equally the gross domestic product in germany today.

our businesses will lose $7 trillion by 2025, and we will lose two and a half-million high-paying jobs, because we are no longer competitive in the global economy. on top of that, it averages out each american family is losing $3400 a day in a year excuse me, more than 9 dollars a day due to poor infrastructure. that is something we can be saving and spending on other things. we are paying this pricing getting nothing for her. if we are serious about achieving infrastructure, we have two take action now. the first effort congress is to fix the highway national trust fund. we recommend increasing the federal motor fuels tax. iron nickel, a year for five years, that would provide a much-needed infusion of nearly 400 billion in highway trust fund. while this is a specific solution, we agree all options ought to be on the table. the investment backlog does not end with transportation.

we have needs across all 16 categories of infrastructure, with acute needs in drinking water, wastewater, storm water, and transit which got our lowest grade at a d-. a sce thinks the committee for holding this hearing on a topic that affects the quality of life and economic prosperity, and livelihood of every american. we must connect today to make our vision of the future a reality. america's infrastructure and system is a source of our prosperity, a sce and it's hundred and 50,000 members look forward to working with the house committee on ways and means to improve america's infrastructure, so that every family, community, and business can thrive. thank you. >> mr. spear, would you please begin? >> mr. chairman, ranking member brady, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on the on behalf of the american trucking associations. the ata is a six-year-old federation representing 50 state trucking industries.

massachusetts truck halls 98% of the freight and two thirds of the freight delivered from texas. nationally, trucking loses 71% of the domestic freight, that is more than $10 trillion worth of goods. in fact, more than 80% of the u.s. communities rely exclusively on truck, which in turn, rely on a national network of roads and bridges that define interstate commerce. without trucks, our cities, towns, and communities will lock key necessities, including food and drinking water. there will be no close to purchase, and no parts to build automobiles or fuel to the rail, air, and auto motor sectors will not exist in the current form without the trucking industry to support them. every time the government makes a decision that affects the trucking industry, those

impacts are felt by individuals in the millions of businesses that could not exist without trucks. our roads and bridges are literally crumbling, just last month, chunks of falling concrete struck cars traveling under bridges in california and massachusetts. we are no longer facing a future highway maintenance crisis. we are living it. every day we fail to invest, we are putting more lives at risk. nearly 53% of the highway fatalities, the condition of the roadway contributed. time wasted sitting in bottleneck traffic rather than at work or with our families has skyrocketed. motorists now pay an average of $1600 due to repairs in congestion each year. trucking now loses 74.5 billion dollars sitting in gridlock. that equates to 1.2 billion lost hours or 425,000 truck drivers sitting idle for an

entire year. these are the regressive and escalating costs of doing nothing. they are reflected in the prices we all pay. these costs are measurable and should serve as offsets for new spending on our nation's infrastructure. ata believes our nations roads in brazil bridges should be paid for by users. while trucks make up 4% of the vehicles on our nation's highways, trucking pays nearly half of the highway trust fund, and we are willing to pay more. ata advocates the passage of the build america funds, consisting of a modest increase in the price of fuel. you find will increase the price of fuel $.20 a gallon at the fuel rocks, just a nickel a year over four years, generating $340 billion over 10 years. this new revenue for our nations roads and bridges is real, not fake funding like p threes or asset recycling.

the build america funds is the most conservative proposal, costing less than one cent on the dollar to administer versus up to $.35 on a dollar for towing schemes. lastly, our proposal is sustainable. it shores of the highway trust fund, and does not add one dime to allegations that. in summary, our nation's growing economy is placing significant demand on all transportation modes. federal inaction has prompted cass strapped states to adopt aggressive revenue schemes that her commuters, immunities, and funds to not infrastructure priorities. with no further than a 10 mile stretch of i 66, minutes away from this hearing room. a year ago the short patch of virginia interstate went to congestion pricing. as a result, i 66 kilometers now pay a peak toll of $47.50 one way, one day, one vote. for many who cannot afford peak

prices, they are easy to drive central areas, or navigate a costly maze of public transportation connections, which are often delayed or down due to underinvestment. this is the essence of regressive. in our future, if you choose to devolve your constitutional authority to the state, in contrast, if motorists paid the average toll, the cost of a 10 mile trip over an eight day period on i 66, their cost for an entire year under ata's build america fund for all roads and bridges in the united states. president reagan understood why our approach makes the most sense, which is why he signed a user fee twice in the law during his administration. now is the time for congress and this president to come together and do what is right for america. thank you mr. chairman.

>> thank you gentlemen, mr. scribner, would you please proceed? >> chairman neil, ranking member brady, and members of the community committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify before you today. in recent years, there have been calls to raise fuel tax in order to address what many call them infrastructure crisis. there are very real infrastructure needs in the u.s. they are not uniform across infrastructure asset classes and are not the result of a lack of federal funding. a more targeted approach is needed to best address these challenges. this would've all involve reassessing the federal role, examining alternatives to user taxes, and removing government barriers to investment. first, contrary to common narrative, infrastructure does not face a broader media crisis in the u.s. of the $250 billion spent by all levels of government on surface transportation infrastructure each year, which is the majority of total government infrastructure spending, the federal government is responsible for about one

quarter, which with state and local government funding the remainder. public spending on transportation infrastructure has remained stable over the last four decades, and in highways, the number of deficient bridges and pavement roughness have been been simply declining over the past three decades. we do see infrastructure problems of varying degrees concentrated in our cities. the failure of state and local government to carry out routine maintenance as they agreed to do anything for federal capital funding led to the decay of mass transit systems airports and water and waste networks. this bad behavior by grant recipients should not be rewarded by federal taxpayers. second congress should reassess the federal role in transportation infrastructure. the continued lopsided role in capital spending as opposed to operations and maintenance has created incentives for local governments to build rather than maintain. in particular this has led to significant overexpansion of

mass transit. to put the spending and perspective just 5% of american workers commuted to work by transit in 2017 yet mass transit received 20% of total government surface transportation funding, more than five times its commuting both share and 11 times more share of total commuting and non-commuting trips. while the largely user supported highway system is more than $10 trillion worth of freight every year mass transit is zero freight while getting $.20 of every dollar collected for road users undercurrent federal policy. and rationalize federal role in would focus on project with true national significance to facilitate interstate commerce and national trade. a mass transit system that exists largely to move local commuters and does not move any freight cannot be appropriately labeled a nationally significant project. third federal transportation infrastructure policy should

realign with the user pays principle. as the vehicle fleet becomes fuel-efficient and eventually electrified the per gallon taxation will no longer be suitable on either efficiency or equity grounds. alternatives to existing user taxes are needed and in the short term this will mean eliminating federal prohibitions on state tolling their own highway segments to all mcminn augmented processes and this would shifted from the entirely into a mileage-based user fee. congress should eliminate federal barriers to infrastructure investment in addition to repealing the tolling prohibition i just mentioned they should also eliminate the aggregate alien private activity bonds to encourage more private sector investing and public purpose infrastructure. the federal cap on the airport passenger charge unnecessarily restricts local self-help. furthermore congress should continue to examine bipartisan reforms to procurement labor and environmental rules that make may unnecessarily increase

costs:the focus of these reforms should maximize returns on infrastructure investment not the number of temporary construction jobs. as harvard university urban economist edward glaeser noted, treating transportation infrastructure as yet another public works program ensures the mediocrity that we see around us. from highways to airports current federal law reduces transportation infrastructure investment while increasing government spending and pressure on taxpayers. given this environment it is unsurprising that many americans are skeptical of calls for higher taxes to fund more infrastructure spending. the evidence suggests they should be and with that you again for the opportunity to testify before the committee and i welcome your questions. >> we will now proceed under the five minute rule with questions for the witness consistent with practice i will first record highs those members present at the time the gavel came down in order of seniority. i will begin by recognizing myself.

mr. you advocated for an infrastructure investment plan that grows the economy and creates road jobs and provides increased opportunity for people of color, women and immigrants. these communities have been unrepresented in our jobs and traits. how will this package ensure that these communities have an opportunity for high-paying jobs? >> thank you mr. chairman. this program will create a number of high-paying jobs. second with the gentrification of most cities people of color have had to move further and further out good transit systems are necessary to get them to the job opportunities. each year more and more women and people of color are joining our apprenticeship program, trading is our building and made a commitment over a decade ago to bring more women and people of color into construction by establishing

apprenticeship readiness programs arp. they have three characteristics. they are to increase the number of qualified candidates for apprenticeships across all trades, increase the diversity of apprenticeship candidates by recruiting women and people of color and veterans, increase the retention rate among apprentices by providing them with deeper understanding of the industry and role of construction currently there were over 100 150 of those programs in effect and let me give you three examples. of the gulf coast construction [ inaudible ] center in new orleans ever 400 people completed the gulf coast program over the last three years, african-americans made up 90% of the people enrolled and women were 9%. in new york city of the construction skills program

they place 1443 graduates in the union apprenticeship program, roughly 90% of the program graduates were black, hispanic or asian. in louisville kentucky they had 293 members from underserved communities including women and people of color in construction skills and placed 111 graduates into construction jobs in the industry. women make up 9% of the construction industry but they make up 25% of our apprenticeship graduates each year so things are moving in the right direction. in 2018 68% of our graduates were people of color and with all the progress we have made we still have much to do, i am not saying the job is anywhere near done but we are headed in the right direction and a

robust infrastructure program will help those communities as much as it helps anybody. >> it is clear the u.s. desperately needs a robust investment as you described to revitalize and build new infrastructure. in your written testimony you stated the chamber supports a multifaceted approach that leverages more public and private resources. i certainly agree we need tools to help the investment gap. in the past taxable direct pay bonds they have been a helpful tool particularly for long-term infrastructure projects in the u.s.. does a chamber support reissuing taxable direct pay bonds and you believe this would be helpful in attracting increased investment in infrastructure? >> mr. chairman the chamber will support expanding and re- approving a number of opportunities for us to get the resources we need to move forward in an aggressive way.

you listen this morning to three or four very interesting ideas on how to move forward but all of them were about the same thing and that is, go to programs that now exist or existed in the past and if necessary add a few we will all get together and support what we finally decide on but the bottom line is if there is no cash there will be no dash. we have got to work on this and i look forward to working with you and the members of this committee to get the support from every source behind moving forward. mr. trumka and i are a mike and ike show, we go all over the country and talk about it and we are getting tired of that . we need to be here more often and get a decision on the

financing. thank you very much for setting up this meeting. >> thank you. you stated in your testimony by 2025 our infrastructure gap will cost each american family $3400 per year or nine dollars per day. that is not literal cash that comes out of our wallets so it may be hard for people to feel that in a concrete way. can you explain how under investing in our infrastructure costs cost people real money? >> i have been speaking all over the country and even outside of the united states on the need to invest for infrastructure for six years. when i first started i asked the same question, i am not spending $3400 per year on infrastructure and then i started looking at it. i started talking with people and it may not be $3400 but it is real cash. my brother just crashed his car and he had to get it fixed and

it was $1000. that is real cash. every time we burn a tank of gas sitting on the interstate that is real cash. any time an airplane is delayed you might have to make a ticket exchange. is $200 per ticket exchange. that's real cash. water utilities in portland oregon every time there is a water main break we made sure our customers had access to bottled water and i was a real cost that had to flow back into the rates the next year charging our customers. your businesses that are stuck in traffic a plumber comes to my home to fix the plumbing he charges for travel time the longer it takes him to get there the more i have to pay, if they don't charge it the rate i am paying is all real cash. when you start to think about it in those terms it averages $3400. you might pay 5000 or you might pay 200 but it is real cash. >> let me recognize the ranking member. >> thank you for holding this important hearing and thank you for the witnesses as well. the insight you provide thank

you. in a way a lot of people didn't think the economy would come back. we are seeing new investment from every business in every corner of this country. i have been to two manufacturing plants in my district last week and two of the counties we have in east texas the gross investment, it was like two years ago and it is growing at 7% and research and development has tripled the rate it was the past 10 years. for the first time businesses are making location decisions to put their plans not overseas but here in the united states . manufacturing, research, intellectual property headquarters. all key things. that kind of growth really demands new infrastructure. new infrastructure also expands more growth. is a virtuous cycle which is why we are excited to be here today. i want to start with mr. donohue. thank you for your leadership

been in the chamber since 1997. your leadership on tax reform, on expanding trade including the new us-mexico candida agreement, your leadership on removing the repertory barriers that can slow our economy down. plenty of ideas and i want to get this one out of the way. increase in the corporate tax rate to 24%, using those dollars for infrastructure, can you tell us why that is such a bad idea? with the chamber opposed that approach? >> first let me say that the fact that we lowered taxes on operations is among the important steps taken that have gotten us the lowest an employment rate in 60 something years. that has put a lot of people

back to work, there is even a large number of people who have come off disability to go back and take up jobs that are available in many industries. trucking for example, there is just, we are out of workers. we are just out of workers. we have to work on all of those issues. going in and is fighting to take money out of the private sector in a way that you just described is not where we ought to go at this point. my view is more people working, more taxes are going to be paid, or people more people that are not taking the pressure of putting additional pressure on public support and

we are moving in a positive way. the politics of texas go all the way back to the time of christ. we know what they are. the issue here -- >> did you want to go through all of that? >> no because it gets a little sticky. the issue today leader is that we have to make decisions about infrastructure without taking apart other parts of the issue actions of government in the private sector the have created these this significant growth and economic benefit to this country. the higher the growth rate is the more we are going to have the resources to take care of the nations challenges and this committee among its other serious challenges can put

infrastructure at the top. if i have talked about your question let me be clear, we won't be supporting that idea. >> you've never talked around a question in your life so thank you for that. quickly you cited $100 billion in global capital looking to invest in infrastructure. i am convinced this is a way we can augment funding for major infrastructure, not just roads and bridges but looking at the full picture. most of the recommendations on how to do this is simply let us borrow more cheap money, is that the only thing that would draw more private capital into the larger infrastructure picture? what else can we be doing? >> as i said in my testimony i think there are barriers to private investment right now. i think the big one is your

denying institutional investors like pension funds he would be willing to invest in public and private partnerships like a tollroad but we don't allow toll roads over much of the system. i think that is where we should start and i am not saying this is a one-size-fits-all approach. what works in new jersey won't work in rural montana but we should free the states to experiment with these different approaches. >> i yield back. >> thank you gentlemen. let me recognize the gentleman from georgia. >> thank you mr. chairman for holding this hearing. i want to thank each and everyone of you for being here. i can recall almost 34 years ago we had a meeting with president johnson and set in effect if you want this project it was the voting rights in 1965 , if you want it made me do it. make me do it. you will make us do it and we need to do it.

thank you for being here to testify. i agree with you. several members of my family drive big trucks in the southeast to make a living. i have traveled some of the roads and highways, we can do better. some of our roads, highways look like third world countries. we can do much better. let's do it. find a way to dramatize the issue, i am with you 100%. thank you. >> thank you. let me recognize a gentleman from florida. >> thank you mr. chairman. i want to thank all of our distinguished witnesses. i want to take the liberty, my good friend mr. donohue there

is no one with his background. 13 years in trucking and then he came on the chamber 23 years ago and he has done a magnificent job. i will note they have over 3 million businesses they represent across the country and the nice thing is 96% are fewer than 100 employees each. to me that says a lot about the chamber maybe a lot of people don't realize that. i also want to say i started my career here four years, my first four years on the transportation committee. i represent florida, part of florida but with the growth there we have gone from 7 billion to 22 million people in the past 30-35 years and we expect another 5 million in the next seven or eight years. we have to find a way to get in front of it. we have more gridlock, everyone in a sense comes to florida loves it but we are having really track real traffic issues in our cities. if you do these projects you have to be thinking down the road 30-50 years but we need to be doing something together i would just say clearly on a

bipartisan basis mr. donohue let me ask you in terms of the dollars and how we will pay for it, what is the investment in your opinion today that we need to be making now or in the immediate future? >> thank you very much for your thoughtful comments. you know here we talk a lot about 10 year cycles. i really believe to fix our nations infrastructure to get ahead of all of the challenges that are being discussed here we have to look at this thing as a 30-40 your project. just think how long it will take year project. just outthink it long it is going to take to build new airports, to build new ports, to dredge out the waterways, to work on water systems in cities all over this country.

this is a massive effort which should be looked at like other massive efforts and that is to strengthen our military, which both houses of congress went forward in the last session to move the resources needed they are. we need an effort like this that everything has to start someplace and the starting someplace is to increase the fuel tax to deal roads, bridges and forms of transit you're going to have to have support for that as well as in the state's. i believe you will get it. when you come to the major projects that are specific to individuals states individual states, the dredging, the water

projects all of that, we have to be a little creative here. the congress of the united states cannot write trillion dollar checks year after year to do this but there are creative ways. there are ways to do private public partnerships. >> let me take a second because we have five minutes i want to tell you about permitting. it is one of your pillars you talked about and just quickly projects that should you want to take five-10 years what is your thought on how we smooth that process out? >> there have been some recent improvements on permitting but if we don't get a permitting commodity or element in this effort we ought not do it because we have got to say to communities look you get a rational amount of time to work

on your permitting, you may get one level of lawsuits but after that you're looking at years and years to get it approved then this committee ought to set the structure with the transportation committee that if you don't get a permit we move the money somewhere else, you would be surprised how quickly permitting will begin to work better. >> thank you mr. chairman i yield back. >> thank you gentlemen. >> thank you mr. chairman and each of you for your testimony. i think it is valuable as some of you have noted your been operating the same testimony year after year after year in congress and across the country and this committee has been guilty of gross neglect and not addressing the funding of infrastructure for most of the past 10 years. at least we had a hearing

finally today. we know that when it comes to roadways and railways, airports, water and wastewater and flood control we have a great need and we have a great wheel will in this congress to talk about it. the only will that is lacking is the willingness to pay for it. we know freeways are not free and that to just maintain the current inadequate system that has given us a great d+ on our infrastructure . if we want to just maintain a second or third rate system that allows us to continue to fall behind our competitors, the best estimate i have seen is that will cost us just that second or third system about $160 billion over the next 10 years. as we look at those the funding needs i think it is important that we not get worse than we are now and i was particularly struck by the amazing proposal of president trump over the

past two years because he would change the funding formula, reverse it so that instead of 8020 federal match he would change it to a 2080 federal program. i don't think any of you have indicated you support such a reversal and i hope he is reversing on that. at the same time as we look at this i think we do need incentives for the states to do their part. we don't want to have them say, after so many years of neglect on this issue we no longer have to bear a burden on this also. i would like to see any initiative we have focused on incentives for the states to do more. some states as you pointed out have made the hard political decisions to do more and others like texas have waited for the government to do something as our infrastructure becomes more and more frail. anything we do here in order to provide the funding as you well

know and it is good to see labor and management together as well as our other experts, will have to be done on a bipartisan basis. that will be particularly challenging. we have just seen within recent months the current minority leader mr. mccarthy make the question of investing in infrastructure that california did almost his only issue in the elections for governor to congress to dogcatcher that if you voted for any increase revenue for infrastructure you were doing harm to the state. i think without a commitment of a substantial number of republicans to back an infrastructure funding bill we will have a true bridge to nowhere. it will not get us where we need to be and we need an unequivocal commitment from the president, something that is difficult to get in public to a specific plan for that to happen. i hope you will focus your attention there as well as here. one thing that does need to be included that he probably won't

be enthusiastic about but i think is in central an essential part of any infrastructure plan is existing the threat of climate change. gone are the days when we could forget the impact of the fires and hurricanes and floods on our infrastructure. indeed i am sure that our engineers already give considerable attention to the fact of global warming, of heat on our roadways, of flooding and water and hurricanes on our infrastructure. it is essential any bill we pass require looking to see whether we are adequately considering those factors, whether we are simply adding to the impact on our economy for looking at smart projects to get us in the right direction. i think in addition to the infrastructure project you have talked about in a little out

of what has been the traditional of infrastructure we also need to be looking at what we can do with energy technology with clean electricity and other forms of energy efficiency and strengthening our electric grid, the military and defense of and has been a leader in this area. we need to be looking at that as a key part of an overall comprehensive infrastructure bill that i hope can be approved on a bipartisan basis. i appreciate your contribution to the effort. thank you. >> thank you to our panel. i think the discussion here today is thoughtful and in- depth somewhat and certainly i think constructive as we move forward on serious issues i think we can all agree we have unmet infrastructure needs across our country and what that means to various parts of

our country can mean different things but as a representative from one of the nation's most rural and in many cases remote districts we have a lot of infrastructure which is different than perhaps the metro subway and other mass transit. we also have the world's largest rail classification with more than 3000 dams in the state and irrigation canals. we have part of the existing keystone pipeline as well as the proposed route for the xl pipeline. more than 65,000 square miles of land which is privately owned across 75 counties. i could go on with more details about my district but i do have concerns that simply raising the gas tax without implementing other reforms would merely get is a more expensive version of the status quo which we know troubles most of us. let me be clear our job on this

committee is to figure out how to fund infrastructure not necessarily make rules for projects. i certainly want to reflect on the fact that i have concerns about moving forward with increasing a tax without corresponding reforms and improvements in public policy. i hope we can get there. i hope that we can continue a constructive discussion as we are having today. you referenced the need to address issues such as labor requirements, permitting roles and lack of [ indiscernible - low volume ] transportation dollars are spent, can you briefly expand on those comments? >> thank you representative smith. those are areas where we see great variations and take labor regulations for instance. if you are in a high union density state and were getting a federal top-down labor requirement that may not impact you much because the workers of

that type of workforce are already unionized. if you go to a state with lower union density that is where you see substantial cost increases to those projects. the same goes for environmental permit requirements, the lack of lifecycle costing where we may get a low bid on the initial construction but that does not take into account the entire project and those costs that are born across at times fan i think we need some basic standards and to recognize one side doesn't fit all but certain solutions will work better in different states than in others but as you said simply increasing the fuel tax and spending more money for the current channels is just going to be a more expensive status quo. >> thank you. it was mentioned earlier about climate change and the efforts have been described in a number of ways but can you elaborate a little bit in terms of how your

industry is already acting on efficiency of energy consumption and various methods there? >> certainly congressman. the two highest costs to our industry our labor and fuel. it is in our best interest to find newer technologies to make the equipment more energy efficient. we are obviously looking ahead several years out at alternative fuel vehicles but in the near term it is making diesel powered tractors more efficient. i think you are seeing tremendous strides in terms of the technology that is coming out of our truck and trailer --. we believe the savings you can get by investment and infrastructure could have a dramatic impact on reducing our carbon footprint. i mentioned $74 billion our industry loses each year sitting in traffic. that is 425,000 drivers sitting

idle for an entire year. that is a very measurable amount of co2 we are admitting and that is just 4% of vehicles on the road. you count in all of the passenger vehicles that are sitting in traffic, that is a huge impact on the climate. investing in infrastructure does make a difference and it will certainly have a benefit to the environment. >> thank you. briefly in a report card you do it highlights the grades and can you explain briefly how with you the highest grade of any sector? >> absolutely. did a lot of investment in the system some $20 billion in one year alone and it was those investments they made in freight rail systems that got their grade up. where we see categories of infrastructure that invest the grades go up.

the condition is better and it handles capacity, operations and maintenance are taking care of. >> thank you i yield back >> >> mr. chairman thank you very much and thank you for finally holding this important hearing on our nation's infrastructure and thank you to all of the witnesses being here today and for all that you are doing outside of this hearing room to make sure everyone understands the importance of adequate investment in our infrastructure. in 2017 the american society of civil engineers issued a study. the infrastructure report card on our nation's infrastructure. they given a d+ and said it was in poor condition. they said things like, there is a strong risk of failure. in my home state of california there is about 180,000 miles of public roads. 45% are said to be in poor

condition. our population is expected to grow by nearly 50 million people in the next 21 years or 22 years. it is highly likely that this is only going to worsen. it seems to me this is more than just an inconvenience. there are tremendous costs as some of you have mentioned to businesses, to our communities, to people and the amount of time they lose and their property and most certainly in their health. what is the impact to the everyday people across our country as we continue to ignore this problem? >> yes congressman thompson i retired a few years ago, i don't have to drive in rush hour traffic anymore. >> but everybody else? >> it seems like i try not to be on the road after 3:30 pm.

the impact is, how do you sit there in that traffic? you're missing soccer games and things in your life. it is a quality of life issue. it is a business issue if you are sending your goods and services. that is the impact and then i guess we have just accepted it. we need to get it fixed and get our quality of life back. >> can you add anything to that mr. spear the importance of trucking in our country? >> absolutely. i think the congestion is really a measurable element here in infrastructure proposal. i mentioned the fuel and co2 but productivity losses those costs are passed on to all of us. what you eat, what you drink, the clothes you wear, the medication we take, we pay higher prices for that. the longer it sits in traffic that is all transcending to the consumer, very measurable. lost times with families, a recent study last month i was

testifying before a committee that washington dc is outranked in number two in terms of congestion. 155 hours sitting in traffic, that is an entire month. that is a month. >> thank you. >> you can calculate how much productivity is lost by our workforce sitting there. if you are a truck driver moving 71% of the economy we are already short 50,000 drivers. if i am sitting in traffic i must be thinking, i could be doing something much better with my life. i'm getting paid by the mile and i'm not moving. >> inc you very much. i am glad the issue of our disaster resilience has been injected into this hearing today . i come from a district that has had our fair share of earthquakes, fires, floods and i know i am legislation on earthquake mitigation and tax incentive act and i hope my bill and others will be thought of and talked about in this

debate. we need to do more to help communities and protect communities in our public investment and any infrastructure and i would be remiss if i didn't point out, because this congress played a big role in it the flood project in my home county of napa downtown napa used to flood every year, we've lost lives and businesses and the biggest flood we have had in decades with this past week and the project there were no problems at all. we need to continue to talk about that and protect our investments. i know it's not a fix for everything but it seems to me in national infrastructure bank is an important component as we move forward and discuss what we deal with infrastructure and if anyone would like to add to that i would be all ears.. the infrastructure part i

guess. >> the issue of infrastructure bank is discussed all the time. there were similar issues around the world when you start a bank you have to put money in it. >> we did it in california, it was my legislation that has helped a lot --. >> i promise to look into california's infrastructure issues. -- >> you guys supported it back then. >> i think the gentleman. >> [ inaudible ] thank you mr. chairman. i look forward to working with the committee on solutions to fund this infrastructure expansion we are talking about and i appreciate the people back in my district.

the region i represent is a very forward thinking region. they have a major regional airport in their district and have more tollway miles than any other district in the state of texas. we have over 100 million square feet of warehouse facilities around the airport and major distribution points. our local people are engaged in this issue. they have projects stacked up. they have projects ready to go. i have a letter here signed by the mayor from cedar hill who served as the chairman of the regional transportation council which is a group formed in the north texas counsel government.

it is basically addressed to the secretary of transportation. it mainly covers items that effect the implementation of those projects once they have already reached a stage of being funded. mr. chairman i would like to enter this letter into the record please. >> objection. no objection. >> other than revenue the per purpose of the letter is asking that we make sure when we put together a revenue package, and i think it has been mentioned a couple of times before, that we not neglect the heart of revising and streamlining our federal permitting process and our federal regulations so that

we don't come up with this very elaborate revenue scheme that funds the thing and then find out it is almost impossible to implement at the local level. i am a former mayor and former state legislator. this is the biggest concern. revenue is always a concern but it is the biggest concern that we have in our district. if i may ask with your background as a civil engineer can you talk to that issue a little bit and make some suggestions to the committee as to what would be categorically the thing that we need to make sure is in this bill? >> clearly congressman first of course is the funding but you are correct. there is the issue of how we permit projects and having had a number of projects as a city

engineer the process can be quite cumbersome. obviously the best way would be to help to streamline and congress has done that. i think in the past last transportation bill there was a streamlining of how we permit projects. we are not looking out what is remove with the environmental considerations. it is morally important that we put a comprehensive program together so we are not going to this agency and then doing at that and then we go back to this agency. some way that we can pull together and i did that on one of our major projects but the project didn't get ill. we did have the opportunity to take advantage of a trial program that the government was doing with the corps of engineers. it turned out to be advantageous by having a comprehensive approach to the permit process. >> i also think coming from a state that over the years has had a very effective design

build program and a streamlined environmental process, not to avoid that process, but to streamline it and allow these projects to move along and these processes not to be number one number two number three , they move along at the same time. what other kind of funding mechanisms can we talk about other than just an outright new tax? >> thank you for that question. as i say in my testimony i think there are barriers to some of these public-private partnerships we have seen including in texas. i think we should perhaps encourage those although i would but we should certainly not stand in the way of states experimenting with these

project. projects. they work well internationally and in the united states on a limited basis. as you said with design builders no reason we should be doing design that builds any design build at the least but i would like to see a lot more design build finance operate maintain concession projects and bring in that private investment that right now we are just not seeing much of here. things like that as that recycling has been successful in australia and these are all things we should be looking at as opposed to just raising existing tax rates. >> thank you gentleman. let me recognize the gentleman from connecticut. >> thank you mr. chairman and thank you for this hearing. i think the witnesses and i especially want to commend our chairman defazio and ranking member graves. i think they are spot on, no pun intended but this is where the rubber meets the road here in terms of addressing the issue of taxation.

there is an old saying if you want to dance you have to pay the fiddler could not be more true. i think the gentleman you have been doing the some time seemingly without congress getting that the fierce urgency of now is present and here. that is why i think it is so important we take action. i appreciated your comments and the motion behind what you're saying and the frustration that underscores everything that all of you have to say with respect to infrastructure and it is shared, a frustration that has been building over eight years without even having a hearing. while this may seem novel it is certainly an extraordinary step but it is certainly will not be an important one unless we follow through with action. there seems to be consensus here that most of you at the table would be in favor of

increasing the gas tax, if that is so can we just go down quickly, would you be in favor of that? >> no. back mr. spear? >> without question. >> absolutely. >> definitely. >> yes. >> thank you. it also seems was a general consensus that as we move forward with the chairman referred to in mr. graves was the is that something you would favor? first on a pilot basis in moving forward? >> yes. >> i would have to be convinced simply the multiplication of how you would fund something like that is astronomical. if we are going to do it let's do it after we up the fuel tax and start building -- >> --. >> mr. spear?

>> i think we would qualify the user fee for the next 10 years. that is the most viable solution for immediate income. technology does have a role. our industry is willing to come to the table and look beyond 10 years it is is a bmt like model we will want to be engaged in developing that. >> many of you may be aware of the fact that such liberal minded thinkers like jim baker and george schultz, martin feldstein, rex tillerson have all proposed a carbon tax, would you favor a carbon tax? i know many of you said all things should be on the table, mr. smith? >> no. >> i would not. >> we would consider. >> an increase in the fuel tax is a common tax. we would have to see the details of it. >> i love the irish.

>> we would have to see the details of it before we would commit. >> i think one of the most important things that this committee can do and i can tell the frustration, a common practice here in congress is that often times these issues are debated. there is no one on this bias that doesn't understand the urgency right now of funding an infrastructure program. there isn't a person here when asked to to raise their hand that funding infrastructure will do it but when it comes to paying for it everyone heads for the exit. what you ought to be insisting on and several of us have said if you vote no you shouldn't be able to take the dough. that is what happens too often appear. as you construct a compromise or you construct an opportunity to move forward, which ever mode that is, there ought to be

some responsibility back on this side in terms of standing up and putting, if you want a project in your district if you have roots that need to be billed, you can't just vote no and say you were against that kind of tax increase and then say i was so happy to have everything built in my district. that can only happen when you guys step forward and hold our feet to the fire. with that i yield back. >> thank you gentleman. i would note members of congress have made careers out of doing what you just described. with that let me recognize the gentleman from new york to inquire. >> thank you mr. chairman. to follow those comments i think that concept of both know take the dough has evolved into the both know say yes caucus of our members and i have seen

some of that occur on both sides of the aisle. i appreciate this panel and the conversation we are having. i think to echo mr. larson's comment that many of us it is the trillion dollar question of how will you pay for it? where will the revenue come from? i think what you are seeing in this debate is the classic dysfunction of congress that we face right now. there is no trust amongst us here on capitol hill as well as with the white house. i think the trick we have to identify is, what is that moment where we can all join hands? the house of representatives, the leaders in the senate and senate representatives as well as the white house. at that point we can solve this problem going forward. as we do that one of the philosophical issues i think we need to hammer down today at this hearing is there has been a lot of discussion around capitol hill about untying the infrastructure investments from the user fee based model and they are looking at the monies

that are new revenue sources that have nothing to do with infrastructure i've heard legalize marijuana, i've heard financial transactions taxes and one of the things that struck me in your testimony when i read it was you were a very strong proponent of making sure that the long-standing user pay user benefit physical principle of the infrastructure tax be adhered to. and you articulate to be exactly why you feel so passionately about that and what is the downside of the coupling? our revenue in the short infrastructure sources from a user fee to a general revenue bucket of money to tie into? >> thank you for the question. we have long supported a user pay principal as the bedrock for sound transportation policy. i will answer that by reframing it as to what advantages does

that have overt general revenue appropriations. the first is fairness, users benefit from the improvement that their taxes generate. those are the most direct beneficiaries. we can talk about broader economic impact but ultimately it is the users that primarily benefit. users who drive more pay more which is also an element of fairness. fund funding predictability highway user revenue does not fluctuate very widely in the long run or in the short run rather and then i think this is important, signaling investment. because of that third element, because revenue tracks use this provides policymakers with an important signal as to how much infrastructure investment is needed to achieve a desired level of efficiency and where those are the four key advantages. >> what is the risk of decoupling? does anyone on the panel

propose a general revenue increase in order to fund the infrastructure? every proposal i read in your testimony seemed to be a user fee based model. >> we are willing to look at any funding source because the cost of inaction is more than the cost of action and in addition to that -- >> you -- >> we will look at -- >> mr. donohue are you willing to violate the for decades? >> i have watched -- >> i only have a minute, yes or no? >> i am not going to. >> thank you. >> i don't know if they are mutually exclusive, we look at all of the revenue sources -- >> you are willing to decouple from the model? >> [ indiscernible - low volume

] >> we support the user fee model and it should be paid for by the people that use it. >> thank you. what is the risk if we decouple? >> i think moving away from the trust fund and user tax model risks turning infrastructure into every other political issue that we see. given these are massive projects that take multiple years and billions of dollars often times, that means we will see dramatic costs and uncertainty spiral out of control. >> that potential of flight for the investment is also at risk is it not? >> absolutely. you will be losing that signal. >> if you are looking for capital acquisition to invest especially asset recycling and other issues you will lose the potential revenue that people are willing to invest because they are not guaranteed what that revenue cost to cover would be? >> correct you will have a lot less information. >> very good witnesses. thank you very much. >> let me recognize a leader on the question of infrastructure for a long period of time.

>> thank you mr. chairman. i can't thank you enough for calling this hearing. this is something i have been waiting for for eight years. i was saddened that my republican colleagues could not find time for this hearing when they had 400 for hearings in eight years. this is i think the first step to restoring the trust mr. reed talks about. i think there were some members of the committee on the republican side that would have welcomed it. i mentioned to mr. donahue and it was almost 5 years ago to the day that we were at harvard business school having essentially this same conversation. i presented i presented a proposal to raise the gas tax index the gas tax, leverage the gas tax and ultimately replace the gas tax with something more sustainable. those two gentlemen gave my speech better than i did.

i am glad you've had more practice and you are here with us today. the only thing that has changed is the federal government today is a less reliable partner. the trump administration is sitting on an eis for a multibillion dollar contract for the gateway project. it has been ready to go. don't complain to me about problems with the administration and environmental regulations, they've had it sitting on their desk ready to go for multibillion dollars which is costing us $100 million a day in excess costs? we are ready to go. it doesn't have to be this partisan. i would ask that the staff distribute a letter from ronald reagan, the speech he gave november 27 1982. it was a brilliant speech when he called congress back to more than double the gas tax, it

passed with almost unanimous support and the arguments he made to date echo what we heard from at least four of our five witnesses today. i would ask my republican friends and my democratic friends to look at this. i think we could have a start of a bipartisan effort to go forward. we have a president who campaigned on $1 trillion of infrastructure and recently he has talked about 1,000,000,000,000 1/2 or 2 trillion and has said he would support against gas tax increase in some instances. if we could have this conversation in every congressional district over the next two months, not with this distinguished panel but with members of organized labor, members of local chambers and businesses, trucking the 150,000 engineers, i am convinced if we invited in here

what america wants, what their needs are and what they would support and remember have be reminded since we did not have a hearing 33 states have put together bipartisan proposals to raise their infrastructure needs. i would hope that we can work with you and with members of congress to have those conversations across the country. would you be willing to work with us to try to have those local conversations, those of you who have people out there? >> absolutely. we are working on it already. >> that would be my response as we go across the country, are we there? >> we would be more than happy to have a conversation. >> i look forward to seeing if

we can piggyback on that effort to help members of congress have this information. mr. spear you touched on an item that gives some people pause about equity, could you talk for a moment about the problems that low to moderate income americans face now with our in action? >> i repeatedly hear from opponents of the user fee increase is a regressive tax. $20 year $100,000 a year you're still enduring that if you are commuting coming in for the hearing last enduring that, if you're commuting, my wife is here, she came here for the hearing, in

the situation she had a pothole, one trip in, i'm praying she did not have that happen today, it doesn't discriminate against her or anybody else that has that whole, it's going to do damage, and you are going to pay for that. it is measurable, $.20 on the gallon, five since year over e- five years. -- five years, you will see roads and bridges improving, $1600, it goes down exponentially, just over $100 more at the pump for the entire year, and i 66, as i said, eight days, the average whole -- the average toll cop under

the build america fund, a no- brainer, an absolute no-brainer, that is equity. let me recognize the gentleman from pennsylvania, mr. kelly? >> thank you, i agree with you when you talk about that, you have to remember, we put that price increase on, per gallon of gas, about $1.20, when you add taxes on to current prices and refer back to things several decades ago, let's put it in the right perspective of what it cost, everybody agrees that we need to do this, roads, runways, rivers cut we got to get this done, but i think mr. read was accurate, who pays for it. i've got one solution, we talked about the public and private partnerships, a piece of legislation that i've introduced, it is called the

gain act, some of you may agree, some might not, to assess and sell distressed assets on the open market, return those funds to the department of treasury, use it for infrastructure in areas where nobody wants to invest, not even a penny, in poor areas, and the rest would go to reduce the debt, it is a win/win, i hope all my colleagues want to get on to that, to find a way how we get this done, without to -- putting too heavy a burden, it cost taxpayers absolutely nothing. we talked about it, and mr. scribner, the cost of doing nothing, how much that is going to come down to, let me ask you also the revenue produced by the cost of doing something.

just in wage taxes alone, the other taxes that would be paid by the work that is being done, does anybody have a figure on that, what kind of revenues would come into the treasury? mr. speer? >> from a highways and bridges perspective, 20 since, tom is advocating a quarter, ours is five cents per year over four years, that is additional, $34 billion per year, currently authorized under the fast act to do $60 million. -- $60 billion. >> the other ancillary revenue, the people fixing these things, i will pay wage tax, they will do the work, the number of people put to work, looking at that percent the comes out of everybody's paycheck, they go straight to social security, we are going to run out of money, we had better do something about it, how about putting people to work? does anybody look at what the

numbers are? i am interested in this. >> i have actually, it's about 500,000 jobs under the build america fund. >> okay. >> in pennsylvania, 19,000 jobs. >> dollars and cents, that's what people pick up on back home, it sounds like a lot of jobs, what does it mean in dollars and cents, to help short the spending that we have, i am really concerned about that. >> payroll wages. it will be a driver coming into the general federal treasury. >> it is a win/win across the board. you made a comment about user fees, those who use it should pay for it, but there is another aspect of that, those who benefit from it, they double combination there i'm not taken exception what you

said, but i'm thinking, we look so much about what this burden would fall on cut we forget is, every single american, an incredible opportunity to do something about it, and looking the other day, talking with chairman brady, the number of electric cars, they are not going to pay gas tax, right? >> less than 0.5%.>> there is 1 million electorate -- electric cars up by 2030, 19 million cars, so if you don't have a user fee, and we've switch from gasoline powered to electric powered, the loss of revenue, because we won't have people buying gasoline and paying a guess on it, if it's not a user fee, how do you replace that loss of revenue?>> registration fees. >> find an alternative is the

answer right? >> absolutely. >> i do believe that those who use it should pay for, and also those who benefit. is always good to see you. representing a lot of great, hard-working americans, mr. chairman, thank you for holding this great hearing, thank you. >> let me recognize the gentleman from wisconsin. >> thank you, this very important hearing, i want to think our witnesses, for your very thoughtful testimony, and the work you've been doing for quite some time to develop consensus about the need for us to move forward on such an important investment. that may make a comment, the rising concern this country about the rise of china, and whether they will eat our cake, and overtake us, and i would submit that the way to beat china, and outcompete china is by making a crucial investment in a world-class infrastructure system in america, the way to

beat china is not erecting walls, barriers, and tears,, be full participants in the 20th century -- 21st century global economy, to win the 5g race, basic and applied research, remain on the cutting edge of scientific, medical, technological discoveries and breakthroughs, remain the most competitive nation in the world, that is what we ought to be focused on, to be those powers right now, the globe this is a important part of it, we got really good at recognizing the challenges we face, what we are lousy at is developing a solution, a consensus, how to move forward, we've been talking about a sustainable revenue source it's going to make sense, i'm going to challenge you all to help me

or convince me on what that revenue source should be, so i can sell it back home to my district, because in so many ways, geography does influence policy, my good friend and colleague, a congressional district five square miles in milwaukee, rural, western wisconsin district, well over four hours from stevens point down to the border of illinois, i'm going to have to be able to convince my farmers and families living in rural communities that whatever revenue source we come up with is going to be fair, and make sense to them. i would submit that transitioning to other revenue sources, only one kick at this can for quite some time, look at how long it has taken us to tea at this hearing, moving forward on something, we have to lock into, the expectation that it will be with us for a very long time, that's why i am concerned about how committed you are on the user fee model,

and whether we are any collision course with technology, if it will make sense with that low income family, in that district, on a fixed income, driving great distances, can't afford electric or hybrid vehicle, whether they will fear that they will pay just abortion it -- contest at the chamber between the revenue >> they will pay a disproportionate amount. it sounds like you are pretty connected to the user fee model, and you express support for, how open are you for looking at a broad-based revenue source that is sustainable, because i submit to the notion that whether you are filling up the gas tank or driving on the roads and highways, all of us benefit from a sound infrastructure system in this country, how committed are you to keep your mind open? bigger congressman, if you look at our statement, you would

find that we segmented roads, bridges, and transit, and suggested let's go and deal with the user fee, and then we said this massive demand, factor, and need, on airports, water systems, interim waterways, ports, etc., but we have said, we are ready to participate in three or four, or five, 10 creative ways to do this, we had the big presentation, and i said what we want to do is what we did when we bought our first house, we want to get the biggest house we can for the smallest price, with the best mortgage -- best mortgage at the lowest rate, and we can do that with investors, of many types from around the world to get the rest of the deal done, but

right now today, we are at great risk, on roads and bridges, and we need to move on it, the quickest way to do that is -- >> since we are running out of time, i hope we keep an open mind, the waterway system, the 5g deployment in rural america, broadband makes sense within the broader infrastructure needs of our country, thank you mr. chairman.>> mr. kelly would like to make a request of the chair. >> i would like to submit a press release so that everybody can take a look at this, incredibly important, really answering part of our question today about who is going to pay for it. >> so ordered, let me recognize the gentleman. >> thank you for holding this hearing, a lot of the problem and infrastructure -- in

infrastructure, the permitting process, overly burdensome, almost 30 years now, they began the permitting process over 10 years ago, when i got to congress six years ago, it was at a standstill, took foreign a half years to get a permit, and the environmental group waited until the hundred and 75th day of the hundred and 80 day time period, and suit us, so i think our permitting process is laughable, makes us less competitive in the world, other countries passes by, it's a restriction we place ourselves, it is a news we put around our own next, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. >> i'm a cpa, pretty much of a pragmatist, i understand and agree that one dollar in 1993, the last time the gas tax was

raised, is worth a lot more than today, and if you expect the same level of service from a $2019 as you did from a 19 $93, you are not thinking clearly, and i do believe that infrastructure is investment, it is not spending money, if you do it properly, you get a return on that investment, but i have one huge problem, and that is that i come from a fairly poor state, south carolina, and some of the counties my district are very poor, some of them are the poorest in south carolina, one county in particular, aided household income of a little over $30,000. i have two problems, one is that 20% of the gas tax that the people in that poor county pay goes straight off the top transit, they don't get a benefit at all from that. and 2nd, south carolina is one of five or six states that got back less than they paid in gas

tax. from the time the gas tax was put in until 2008, when we started subsidizing that. so i hear you about investment and the return, but what do i tell mistress beer, you explained it to my folks back home, and that poor county, they make $35,000 a year, why should they, with 20% of the gas tax off the top, subsidize high-speed rail, the subway system, the metro system here in washington, why does that make sense for them? >> the best way to do it is to look at what they are currently paying to repair their vehicles because of damage, and doing it by roads and bridges. >> it goes straight off the top transit, they get no benefit whatsoever, why should they agreed to pay that? speak -- >> the current authorization, of

5% to be spent on non-highway projects, we pay the tab, the trucking industry, only 4% on the road, of the vehicles, we would like that to go into roads and bridges. >> how would you explained to these poor families in south carolina that they should be subsidizing these rich projects? enriched states? >> i would take a different tectonic, men will -- will outlive the ability to drive by about seven years, and women by 10 years, whether you live in any particular part, you will need a service other than you getting in your car. >> mr. donahue, why -- how would you tell them why they should subsidize these projects?

>> you may not like the answer, but the reason that people from the trucking business and all over agreed to let those funds go to transit is you need to do that to get urban votes for rural vote -- rural roads. >> that's the only way they can get it across the line? >> we would all be harder pressed to get what we need, if we can't get urban votes for rural roads. >> how do i explained to these folks in rural south carolina why they should be taking 20% of the gas tech -- gas tax to subsidize these rich states? >> i would look at the overall intake and outtake, a lot of states get more and. >> south carolina gets -- before the trust fund went negative, the federal government started to subsidize a, they were getting $.96 back

for every dollar. >> i'm talking about taxes in general, you might not get something here and get something over here, i would like to look at that, but i would tell them this, the cost of inaction is costing them as well, the products they buy the takes more time to be delivered, higher prices, and they are paying through the nose for not having all of that done. i talked before, i was asked about funding sources, and i think member buchanan asked tom how much he thought it would take, i tell you what, what our figures are, we think it will take $2 trillion to bring the infrastructure up to a good state of repair, and another $2 trillion to bring us to the 21st century. user fees are only going to be a part of that, we are going to have to fund a part of that

some other way, and your members, and i know about poor rural counties, i come from one right next to the poorest in pennsylvania, it will get subsidized in another way. >> thank you, let me recognize the member from new jersey. >> with all due respect, to the chair, mr. rice, if we follow that path, go down that path, we are going to have anything. mark my word for it. that's the big argument we had in the tax reform, quote unquote, december 2017, if were to work together, let's work together, you know how much new jersey it's back from every dollar they send to washington? west virginia, louisiana? how can you sit there and say people have to know what they're paying for, i want to know how come i'm sitting all the money to louisiana, we are one nation, if eisenhower felt that way, we would've had the

interstate highway commission, you know it, and i know it. that is absurd thinking. with all due respect. >> [ laughter ] >> many have rightly focused on the need for improving a national embarrassment which is our d+ infrastructure, imagine that. we've heard about the budgetary gimmicks and shell games, as we have failed to make hard choices about the crumbling infrastructure. congress is suffering the consequences, there are pending infrastructure projects in the state of new jersey. we have 229 dams that are high hazard potential. that is over a $.5 billion in drinking water needs. $300 million in unmet needs for our parks. you should be cutting this,

they are all different states, one union, different states that have different needs, the population density has a lot to do with that, lower your taxes, then stop complaining, we are double taxed, now that you did what you did the deduction, the oldest deduction in the history of the country, i hope you're proud of it. building infrastructure programs like gateway, will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, mr. donahue, i understood exactly what you are saying and doing, the big fight over the import and export bank, a lot of democrats voting for, a lot of republicans voted that we don't need it, i remember that battle, the chamber stood up, and i am proud of the chamber.

trying to do the job as well as the other side, with all due respect.>> i noticed that we've made changes in the way we are calculating our support. >> yes. >> no shortage of bipartisan solutions, the tunnel right before scott affects millions of people, in previous congresses, we talked about the proposal for indexing the gas tax, with the former head of the committee, he was no wild lefty, i can assure you. you don't even want to talk about it. now we have gateway products -- projects, and the issue is the president. our president. i might add, holding up one of the most important infrastructure projects in the nation, for no reason other

than a pities bite we have to associate with this president, how was to explain it? give me some algebra or geometry to explain it. infrastructure investment has a higher return on investment than almost anything congress can do, direct bearing on the daily lives of most americans. every dollar of infrastructure investment creates more than three dollars in economic growth, and i wanted to ask you, can you talk about why making a infrastructure package is so important to the labor community, why is that so important? >> it is important for number of reasons, one, it creates jobs, it is a massive job creator, 2, good paying jobs, construction jobs, helps contribute to the economy, and

they offer a pathway out of the communities where disadvantage people of color, it offers them a pathway out, and a career for life, and all of those makes lives a whole lot easier, we put too many hours on the job already, adding another 97 hours stuck in traffic and not being with her family, not coaching little league, not going to church, not doing a number of things, makes the quality of every american's life less than what it should be, could be and will be, when we correct this problem. >> thank you, and figure to the panel, thank you chairman.>> thank you. the chair recognizes mistress weichert from arizona. -- bit as a >> the chair recognizes mr.

sweichert from arizona. >> let me share with the panel and my fellow members, finance issue, technology, permitting, litigation, those sorts of things. on the financing thing, madame chairwoman, i would like to submit for the record, basically something from the center for capital markets about the amounts of insurance capital that would be available. >> without objection. >> one of the reasons for putting that in the record is, the infrastructure bank, those things, capital isn't our problem, it silos, what is the mechanism to pay back, there is plenty of capital floating around, in the world right now, for infrastructure, your channel for paying it back. mr. donahue, i understand you

had a working group that was discussing creative ideas. >> we went out to a broad range of people, professionals, down to students. and said we are very interested in ideas that would help us look forward in innovative ways, on every type of financing you could think about, we've gotten back an unbelievable number of reactions and suggestions, we are going to pick the best, and give some financial ideas, bring them to the community -- to the committee. >> my one concern, i ask you to broaden your horizons, financing is one of our

mechanisms, where do you get the revenue to pay, particularly if we use bonded and that this -- indebtedness. i know it is tough for the engineering world, bringing technology, engineering, financing together, a? thought experiment, what will mass transit look like in a urban area, 15 years from now, a bus, light rail, autonomous ridesharing vehicle to pick you up, i believe it is the latter, the design of what you finance into will look different, and rural broadband, we are launching the mini satellite, the solution for rural broadband is flying in the sky, and being organized right now, the solution is here, that has been solved, but we don't seem to catch up in our debates and discussions around here fast enough, or even something as

simple as a wave, building layers of a smart community, how do we actually make technology part of this infrastructure discussion, because there is some data out there that a smart city design will have dramatically more impact as a single item in urban traffic than almost anything that we actually do. the last one i want to touch base on, this is open to the panel, how do we make the efficiency of permitting processes go faster? we in maricopa county, which i accept is a large urban populated county, we paid ourselves for the vast majority , we missed the gravy train of the interstate highway system, we did ourselves, we rounded up, built, and the vast majority, but we have one that took 25 years, to eventually

break ground on, because of litigation, environmental, back to litigation, back to environmental, anybody here with a brilliant idea of how to shorten that permitting process?>> first of all there are many steps for permitting that are important and necessary, into many instances, in fact they take too long, we would favor streamlining that, i would point to one thing, a number of permitting reforms were included in the last transportation at bill, the fast act, they have not been implemented, we would like to see those reforms implemented, then we are open to joining on other reforms. >> there are still holes in the litigation side, different levels of litigation, i know i'm down to my last few

seconds, but -->> the gentleman is out of time. >> with that, i yield back. >> the gentleman from illinois, mr. davis. >> thank you very much, madam chair, i want to commend the chairman for calling this hearing, i want to thank all of the witnesses who are here. i am excited about so many aspects of what this bill will actually do, as we do it. of course job creation is one aspect, and i'm seriously excited about that. i am a strong ally of labor, and i support project labor agreements on construction activities. but i also serve as chair of the subcommittee on worker and

family support, and i'm interested that, with any federal investment, individuals who are often left out of the labor market get an opportunity to participate, that is, foster youth, individuals who have been trained in job corps, who have not reached the point where they have union membership or connection to actually get into the union, how do we find ways to bring more of this disadvantaged workforce into the opportunities that would be created? >> i gave an expansive answer to the beginning of that with the chairman, but we are doing to other things that i did not talk about, 60% of our

graduates last year were people of color, out of our apprenticeship program, we are doing pre-apprenticeship training to give people the skills necessary to pass the entrance exam and then succeed in our program, that has been highly successful. in addition to that, we have a program called helmets to hardhats. people coming out of the military, a large percentage of women and people of color, and bring them directly into our apprenticeship programs, giving them the skills that they need to succeed. in addition to that, we retrain every couple of years, and one of the best kept secrets of the u.s., other than the military, the u.s. labor movement trains more people every year than any other entity out there, and a

growing number as i said, of people of color, people have been disadvantaged, had the door shut on them. i want to emphasize one other point. minorities and people of color are being forced out of the cities, they are being forced to move further and further, and further way, from where many of those jobs are located. the transportation system, the transit system, that could be created is absolutely essential for them to be able to get to the opportunity that we create, not only with this program, but with every other program out there. >> that me ask you, mr. donahue, i commend you for the leadership that you have provided and continue to provide on this effort.>> we used to have the program called access to jobs program, a reverse commute, oftentimes job

opportunities are located where people are not. and getting those people to where the jobs are taught becomes challenging. and difficult. the access to jobs notion was a program that provided resources, through the transportation bill. for individuals to go where the jobs were, and to be compensated in the process of doing it. how do you react to that kind of effort in the bill? >> we have to do two things at the same time, number 1, there are people still looking for jobs, many of them are in small communities across this country, about 400 communities, and they

are not about to leave, but the jobs have left. and we are working very hard with our companies to try and get individual companies to go to some of those places and set up jobs, because those folks are not going to leave, they've got five years left on a mortgage, and junior and the family lived in the basement, they are not going anywhere, they want to see if they can get jobs there, but other than that, those kinds of circumstances, we are generally short of people. weather -- we have the lowest unemployment rate in 60 some odd years, there are some people not prepared to work, and i give a lot of credit to what he is talking about the pre-training, training, to get people up to speed on

mathematics, and reading, things of that nature, which you absolutely need now to work. so we are looking for people, and we are going to have to do the things we discussed to get opportunities where people are located. what we basically have, we have people without jobs, and lots and lots of jobs without people, and it is a challenge for everybody in this room. >> thank you, we are going to proceed now to to for one, the majority and minority, the precedents of the community -- the committee, we will go to ms. sanchez. >> i'm glad we finally had an opportunity to address this urgent issue that should unite americans across party lines and demographics.

we all know that the infrastructure is crumbling, but i want to emphasize that infrastructure includes more than just massive highway projects, it also includes millions of city roads and bridges that the local governments don't have the capacity to build on their own, even maintenance of schools and homes and other buildings, many pieces to the puzzle, and if any one of those pieces to the puzzle are missing, it grinds our economy and way of life to a halt. safe drinking water, and everything in between, but they are all dependent on systems that were built back as far as -- far back as the 19th century, and desperately needs investment. so whether you live in a urban, suburban or even a rural committee, investment in infrastructure will benefit everybody. in my district, for example, one of the most urgent priorities, is the whittier narrows dam, protecting more

than a dozen cities in los angeles county from flooding, another is a very small bridge that was built in 1965 that connects los angeles and orange counties, structurally deficient, but carries more than 20,000 vehicles a day. there are stories like this and every one of our districts, if the economic and if it's alone aren't enough to muster the bipartisan support we need to build 21st-century infrastructure, then we should at least be able to do so to do a fundamental thing that i think is the number 1 priority, protecting the health and lives of our constituents. so i want to start by focusing on the backlog that is facing the u.s. army corps of engineers. in your testimony, you noted the current rate of investment, it would take more than 50 years to repair the nation's dams and levees, extreme weather conditions, and events become

more frequent as a result of climate change, how likely is it that we will experience loss of life as a result of that backlog if we don't start doing something immediately? >> it goes up if we don't replace those, high hazard dams, they have life below the dam, they are at risk, and the longer you wait, the more the opportunity occurs for an event that will cause them to fail, and we haven't been investing enough in those particular products -- projects, we have one in my neighborhood that we have been working on for 25 years, the same problem. >> i happen to be a card- carrying number of the i fw, we take the electric grid for granted, california has been a leader in developing renewable energy and improving energy efficiency, what is the federal

role to ensure that the infrastructure is modernized and able to support electric transportation, energy storage and distributed generation? >> thank you for the question, one of the things i will say, it goes to the other side of your conversation, one of the areas that we have found with the electrical grid, they tend to be privately owned and have the revenue, they tell us there issue is the ability to permit projects, anything that you can do to help them, not really about the money, it is about the regulations. finally, i want to give you an opportunity to respond, a response to a question by my colleague where a witness alluded to downsizing of union workers doing work, i would like to address that if you could, are there downsides to using union labor? microphone?

>> there are no downsides, union labor is the most skilled. >> and the safest. >> absolutely, in low density areas, it would increase costs, but he doesn't understand the principle of prevailing wage, take the standard there, that is what is required, not a higher wage but the standard that already exists, to prevent the federal government to use its buying power to drive down wages as opposed to driving them up. >> i have been on many union construction sites, where the safety records are topmost in the industry, i agree that you can save costs by using more skilled workers, thank you, i yield back to the chairman. >> i recognize the gentle lady from indiana. >> i look forward to working

with both of you and my colleagues to find ways to enhance this country's infrastructure. thank you to the guests, we know too well that it's a difficult issue, we've neglected for too long, the national association of manufacturers said we need a reliable user based funding stream, so that families, drivers and manufacturers can have safe highways. i one of the largest manufacturing districts in the country, we need to keep the trust fund afloat, financing infrastructure projects with a sustainable funding stream, while addressing burdensome regulations that run up costs and delay projects. so with that, the fast act included some provisions to improve the freight network, and surface transportation projects, what is the status of

the national freight network, and what is the biggest area of need to ensure it is not hindering the flow of goods? >> the biggest concern of freight, my colleague will tell you, is the congestion that one of those trucks is getting to, to get to a port, or take the back to market, sitting in traffic, and also the people that work at the facilities. and we have the issue of the facilities themselves, bridges and highways, that they have to go over. >> building on that, we need to figure out how to fund such critical investments. do you think a freight vehicle miles traveled, into priority freight corridor's, i would have a potential to replace the gas tax? >> my apologies. it could be one of the options, at this point, we are looking at a way to get funds in here to fix these problems today,

they take a number of years to put together. >> mr. scribner, my colleague reintroduced the move america act, move america bonds to expand tax-exempt financing for public and private partnerships, for the states, do you believe allowing states to expand those would create a boost to the resources to ease the strain on state and local governments? >> i think increasing financing options relieves pressure on traditional funding channels. >> do you know of any other funding mechanism that we could build on? >> as i said my testimony, if we want to see more private sector investment in these projects, the big one to tackle would be eliminating the private activity bond volume, set at $15 billion, more than

two thirds of that has been issued or obligated to date. >> thank you i yield back. >> let me recognize the gentleman from new york, a terrific advocate, always presenting compelling arguments. mr. higgins? >> thank you, the issue of infrastructure, in terms of bricks and mortar, there is no dispute, universal acceptance of the urgency to invest in american infrastructure, the user fee model is predicated on an activity that should be paid for by the users of the activity, providing there is no larger benefit. and a couple of examples, we are stuck on this user fee idea, no cash, no -- -- no cash, no

dash. we have spent lots of money with deficit financing to build roads and bridges in iraq, and we were told that it would be part of the tax on iraqi oil, that never materialized, we are stuck with the bill, no return on investment, $1.5 trillion over a ten-year period will never recapture the economic growth, everyone's analysis matters, concluding that, a corporate tax cut, for every one dollar, you get $.32 back, a 68% loss on investment. infrastructure is different, in his opening comments, he talked about a 3-1 ratio, for every

dollar that you invest in infrastructure, you get three dollars back in economic growth. so if you spent $1 trillion over five years, that would result in $200 billion in each of the five years, $200 billion in a $22 trillion economy is 1% economic growth. if you add the multiplier effect of another $400 billion, you are at 3% economic growth. through infrastructure alone. when that 3% economic growth for each year over the next five years, based on a infrastructure investment, on top of what economists forecast growth to be, about 2%, you are in the 5% range.

the last time the american economy had that kind of sustained economic growth, we did not have budgetary deficits. we had a budgetary surplus, a lot of money to invest in education, scientific research and the other things that we see and view as important. most economists believe that the greatest return on investment is infrastructure. we create good jobs, we make the economy function that much more efficiently. it seems to me that we shouldn't be stuck on the user fee, we should have it for the corporate tax cut, that did not pay for itself, this does, so however way we will do it, and i know it will be paid for in some way, but we need to focus on the growth that would occur and the growth that has been deferred for the past 20 years, when in fact we are investing hundreds of billions of dollars

in iraq and afghanistan to reconstruct roads and bridges and not here in america. >> your analysis also did not add in the savings of roughly $2000 a year for traveling, that would be spent on other things, and that would spur the economy even more. we are at a crisis here. $200 billion a year for five years, that's about half of what it actually needs to be, we think it takes $2 trillion over 10 years to get us up to good working order, and another $2 trillion over the same 10 years to get us into the 21st century, where we have a grid that is more dependable and more efficient and saves money to do a number of other things. we also -- i know you are

interested in the use of technology, we are undergoing, the labor movement, undergoing a features project right now, to determine where the economy is going and where work is going, and how we plug-in artificial intelligence, robotics, and other types of technology, how that will affect us, the economy, and actually the american society. >> thank you, i yield back. let me recognize the gentle lady from alabama. >> i'm so excited that we are talking about a subject that i think actually should unite respect -- republicans and democrats because of the urgent need we have to fix infrastructure, whether you live in rural alabama, urban new york, infrastructure affects everybody's everyday life. i would like to point to a problem that i am experiencing

in my local rural communities, and that is the issue really of a public health crisis, and water and sewer infrastructure, this is basic infrastructure. in america in 2019, there are parts of my district, and alabama, some of my constituents live in remote locations that are not connected to the water and sewer lines of the county or the city. decentralized areas, they inherent land, and put trailers on the land, creating small enclaves, and they are using tanks if they can afford it, and some of them are using straight pipe, and we know there is a problem of the waste leaving their domicile, but going outside and pedaling in the soil, sometimes flowing into the local streams, it is a

serious public health crisis, and i notice in your testimony, you actually spoke about that, and i would like for you to expand upon the real public health costs that are associated with our crumbling infrastructure when it comes to water and sewer? >> thank you very much. i got a call, maybe your area, or louisiana, a water crisis, because they could drink water, that's what they have to do, they have to go by bottled water, anywhere from 5-10 -- when i say we, in oregon, working with rural counties, having some programs, helping those areas, it is a public health issue, we'll more to the life expectancy, wastewater, then any medical procedure.

>> absolutely, you talked a little bit about the importance of public and private partnerships, i was a bond lawyer, i have to tell you, making sure that we do it we can, on this committee to promote funding, to eliminate the cap on private activity bonds, their ways that we can help spur better private and public partnerships, would you talk a little bit about the importance of really investing across the board, and municipal financing, helping with the crumbling infrastructure that we are seeing?>> certainly, somebody who is a city engineer, i took advantage of the municipal bond market, it gets passed on to the people that use them, particularly in water and wastewater, they will

be able to afford those water and wastewater projects, it is that simple. >> would you like to add to that? you talked about the build america fund, similar to the bonds and other things that will help to spur that? >> we are supporting 71% of the domestic freight in the country, in terms of the supply chain, it is very instrumental, this speaks to mr. rices question earlier about how interconnected infrastructure, roads, states, districts are, if you look at the heat maps that i put my testimony, you get a good example of how even the most rural communities are served by states, 601,000 -- 600-1000 miles away, even the

poorest communities are getting the cost contained goods and products as quickly as they can. >> you talked about private activity bonds in particular, could you talk more about that? i know two thirds of the $15 billion have already been allocated, and god knows they never make it to the rural parts of the nation, but could you talk about that? >> this allows more alternative construction, management, financing options, more to the table than you can do with just traditional funding, and ultimately what i want to see, and i'm sure many do here as well, but shifting the risk, construction and financing, onto investors, a major benefit to these types of programs that you can't get through the traditional parts. >> is about thinking holistically, being comprehensive about how we go about funding the crumbling infrastructure, thank you.

>> let me recognize the gentleman from illinois to inquire. >> thank you, and i want to thank you for holding this hearing, i want to thank you for your valuable testimony, my district in central illinois is kind of a poster child for infrastructure, roads, bridges, rail, locks and dams on the illinois and mississippi rivers, you can't go cross a bridge or navigate down the river without seeing the need for infrastructure. according to the american society of civil engineers, of 10 infrastructure categories, seven are in mediocre condition and 3 are in poor condition. and the people of this country deserve better. we've heard a lot from both sides on the need to improve infrastructure, but how do you pay for, and that is the question. any reasonable person knows it

will be a multifaceted approach with the support of local, state and federal governments, along with private industry in partnerships between all of these entities to get it right. i want to bring attention to one of those partnerships in particular, between the insurance industry and those looking to finance infrastructure projects. not only do i have a heavy ag and manufacturing presence, but also large insurance companies, state farm, allstate, carthage mutual. the numbers are staggering, of the $5.8 trillion in investment assets held by insurers, $986 billion are in municipal securities issues -- issue too fun schools, roads and hospitals. they directly invest in infrastructure projects, having provided $26 billion or 6% of all private infrastructure investments in 2016.

insurance companies investments in these types of bonds create new demand for these finance products, which lowers the cost to fund states, highways and sewer systems, it ends up being a win-win for everyone. mr. donahue, the u.s. chamber of commerce released a paper yesterday titled the role of insurance investments in the u.s. economy, and mr. chairman, i would like to submit that for the record here today. thank you. would you mind providing to the committee a high-level overview of this report and its conclusions? >> i would be very happy to see that such a summary comes very quickly. but to tell you just in one sentence, when we put together

the equation on how we are going to do this, investment by domestic and international insurance companies will be part of the solution.>> thank you. i was wondering if anyone else would care to comment on the role of potential insurance investments. thank you. >> the only comment i would make is the report, we considered all options open, they have a lot of capital to bring to bear, but they expect to be repaid for that investment, another tool, and as you look at the equation, you have to look at all of these and include them. >> thank you, those are all of my questions. the gentle lady from washington state. >> thank you for holding today's hearing on such a important topic, thank you to the witnesses for being here, i had the privilege of

representing a diverse district with rural and urban areas, due to the makeup, a unique set of issues needs to be addressed when it is talking about infrastructure, the safety of the bridges, roads, waterways and dams, i am happy that we are here today discussing how to invest additional money into our crumbling infrastructure, i would like to highlight one area, that is left behind, broadband, it is estimated that 32 million americans last access -- lack access to broadband, where the internet is a key driver of economic growth in all sectors. rural america is being shut out for prosperity and growth in the modern economy, in my state alone, nearly 366,000 people, my state, a technology state,

366,000 people without what the fcc deems as adequate internet service. this has an impact on the transportation infrastructure as well,our transportation infrastructure as well, some of you are talking about the costs that we are all paying for infrastructure, whether it's fixing your car when it hit a pothole or the cut of being in traffic. but there's also a cost of not having adequate broadband, people have to make trips they otherwise wouldn't have to take. it means lost opportunities where there's not economic opportunity because a business can't move into an area because the infrastructure isn't there. so i see in your report that you've given the nation's electricity and transmission lines, a.d. grade. i believe many in my district would describe access to broadband as receiving an f- letter grade but in order to

solve that rural broadband problem, first we need a complete and accurate picture of the problem. and unfortunately the national broadband map hasn't been thoroughly updated in years. and we can't really solve a problem if we don't have the data and understand the size of that problem. so first, mr. de loretto, would you be supportive of allocating infrastructure funds to updating the map and do you agree this is an urgent problem? >> i'm not sure i can speak one way or the other, we don't include broadband in our report because typically civil engineers aren't doing broadband and so our experts will do the report, tend to be experts in those categories. so i'm probably not the best person to ask. >> that's fair. mr. donohue, what do you feel about rural broadband given there's so many missed economic opportunities there? >> where we have a responsibility to work to put adequate coverage in these rural areas for broadband. whether it belongs in infrastructure spending, of

this type, or it comes out of requirements on the other industries that are very involved in this, which some exist now. it is a matter that's going to have to be discussed. i'm very sensitive from an education point of view, and from a medical point of view, to this expansion of broadband and would be happy because we cover all these other subjects to participate in those discussions. i just wouldn't want to say right now, this is the place that those funds should come from. >> i think broadband, rural broadband is basic foundational infrastructure for every sector of our economy. and so, what do you feel about the investment in rural broadband and where we should, should we make it a priority and where should those

resources come from? >> i think absolutely we need to make it a priority. i come from a rural area and i know what happened. experts are now warning of the broadband gap. which rural and low income communities suffer from a lack of infrastructure to deliver reliable, fast internet referred to as broadband. so we would welcome that opportunity. and i would just if you wouldn't mind just add one other thing, we've talked about infrastructure, but one of the infrastructures we didn't talk about today and i think needs to be mentioned is our crumbling school system. the physical plants of our schools are deteriorating. in congressman evans district, children are going to school without heat, without air conditioning, asbestos, lead paint and a number of things, we need to focus on that and generally it's rural schools

who fall behind because of the way those systems are funded. >> thanks for adding that. i yield back, mr. chairman. >> with that let me recognize the gentle lady from california. >> thank you. i'd like to draw the committee's attention to the need for investment in our freight, rail network and i'd like to address this to mr. de loretto. my district in southern california sits near the ports of los angeles and long beach. 40% of imports that come from the port go to their rest of the nation and 25% of the nation's exports go back out to other countries through those ports. most of those products then go through freight rail lines through my district in the san gabriel valley. one of the most congested areas in the nation. unless fixed, there are excess emissions, train horn noise and the potential for collisions. and by 2040, there is expected

a dramatic increase, the ports are projected to handle about 35 million units of cargo, which will generate close to 10,120,000 truck trips per day, nearly double the current levels. of course we have some that are working on this, the alameda corridor east project or ace is responsible for conducting grade separations to facilitate the movement all these freight trains through this urban area. they've constructed 19 grade separations and more than 1.6 billion have been raised by them from regional state, federal railroad programs and sources. other sources. however the federal contribution stands at less than 15% despite the national significance of this goods movement through this corridor. mr. de loretto, can you discuss the importance of maintaining and improving freight railcar doors especially those near our nation's major ports? is this need expected to grow

and how can the federal government further invest not only direct in freight real but also projects like ace that support the national freight network? >> in a report card, good news in all the 16 categories was freight did receive the highest grade, grade of b. those were experts in the industry that sit on the report card, look at the data that's out there and analyze it and get a grade. we have 5 million tons of freight delivering approximately 85,000 passengers also a day. and the freight railroads the vast majority of it but they spent $27 billion in one year in freight rail improvements. i can't talk about where they made those improvements but all over the nation. between our 2013 and 2017 they spent 20 billion a year on freight trail improvements. out of our 16 categories they are the one category that spent a lot of money on freight real. you're absolutely right, getting goods to the porch so they can go overseas or wherever they're going is critical to the economy of this nation. >> thank you for that.

mr. trumka, mr. donahue in my lesson it is district in southern california we have over woman gridlock, pollution and congestion. that's why we are so excited about expanding our public transit system. we might be famous for our freeways, we are excited to see the expansion of something called the light rail gold line which connects san gabriel valley to downtown los angeles and other segments as well. the last segment of the gold line added 19 segments to the rail line from pasadena to azusa but what's even more exciting is the greater economic development it spurred, more than 8500 housing units, more than 2.4 million square feet of commercial development, private sector investment of over 4.7 billion, so mr. trumka and donohue, can you talk about the implications for job creation and business

development when you have these kinds of projects? >> it's almost infinite and it also opens up opportunities. as i said earlier, people that have been disadvantaged and denied those opportunities are forced to live further out of the city and in order to get there they need the transportation system. but that happens every single place where we do it. businesses grow up, housing grows up, economic activity floors is, when you have the ability to get to and from your home and work. so we are so very much in favor of improving the rail system of a light rail and transit as well. >> mr. donohue? >> first of all, i served on one of the major railroad boards for 22 years. and the answer about the investments by the privately owned railroads get up around $20 billion a year.

and you multiply that for a long period of time, and that's why we have the systems we have. the reality that you face in that circumstance is those systems are surrounded by roads and off ramps and so on, as you articulated, that were not at the same time improved by government. and we need to look at that. in terms of other rail projects, i'm a realist. and when they bring those projects, we'll look at them. >> thank you. >> thank you. i'm reminded that mr. trumka and donohue they have a meeting coming up in the near future. the committee can proceed on that basis it would be noted. the gentleman from kansas. >> recognized to inquire. >> thank you, mr. chairman and thank you witnesses for

joining us today. the tax cuts and jobs act has gotten our economy growing at historic levels. i think we all agree that infrastructure is a key to our future. and in order to support our economy, our education, national security and in general our quality of life, that's why i'm glad we hear today to talk about how to continue to grow the economy and rebuild the country instead of focusing on hearings and investigations that may not help us move forward. as a representative from kansas i'm proud to know that our country continues to benefit from the leadership of president eisenhower, for our massive highway system. and as we meet today look at ways we can work together to provide that same leadership for the next generation of americans. in the 63 years since president eisenhower established the interstate highway system, we've made a lot of progress connecting our country throughout roads and infrastructure, it wasn't even imagine six decades ago. however as a country and economies evolved, we must do

more to cut the red tape and streamline the processes to build new infrastructure at a faster and more cost effective rate. as i mentioned, i believe infrastructure is key to our economic growth. perfect example of this, the problem that we had in our country is in the north junction in wichita. right in my district, where interstate 235, interstate 135, kansas highway 254 and kansas highway 96 meet. currently there is 96,000 vehicles that travel across that annually, including 9,400 trucks, and that use that on a daily basis. by 2050, the kansas department of transportation expects that to nearly double to over 160,000 vehicles per day. the concept has been produced, but we need to actually start construction, we need to move forward with that project. in wichita being the air capital of the world, a major manufacturer of goods as well

as producer of agriculture products in the area, we need to make sure that projects like the north junction work to help not only our city but also the country. it's also important that we emphasize and recognize that infrastructure doesn't just include the roads and bridges, it includes things like water treatment plants, airports, waterways, and broadband, you know, which are vital to so many areas across not just my state but also our country. as we look for these new solutions, we need to make their that traditional sources of revenue for that like the gas tax should be treated as user fees, meaning that the money collected to the gas tax and set aside for the highway trust fund should be used as its intended, and focused on improving roads and other transportation needs. we know that highway transportation funds, the needs have surpassed the receipt since 2008, leading us to have to use some general funds to help maintain that process. so we need to make sure that

as we address this, go forward, that we've got a leaky bucket, we need to make sure that we focus on how do we improve the surface transportation. make sure money is used there. i want to make sure got a little time for questions, one of the things i mentioned about the highway trust fund, and mr. scribner, maybe you can address this, is while i believe the trust fund should be used as a user fee, currently we talked about before 20% of it is being siphoned off for non-highway projects, you believe the money should be used for highway transportation, as it was originally intended? >> yes. i think we've seen it occur over time, beginning in the 1970s, but the gradual mission creep and the highway trust fund to fund all sorts of things, some which have nothing to do with transportation, you know, we've seen transportation museums get funding in the past. but i think yes, that money should be repurposed and focused on core highway

assets, because it's the users of those assets that are paying and where that revenues coming from. >> one of the other things we've talked about, how do we identify projects of national importance? i mean, do you have some thoughts on how we would do that? >> well, i think the focus should be on moving the freight. and that's why i said in my testimony that i don't think mass transit anywhere should be considered a nationally significant project. that isn't to say that the new york city subway system or transit systems especially in a six legacy transit cities aren't important. they are. but those are local issues, and i think it's important to refocus the federal issues on issues that are truly national. >> all right, thank you. i'm about out of time. mr. chairman, i'll yield back. >> with that, let me recognize the gentleman from virginia. mr. buyer to inquire. >> thank you very much for doing this. and it's fun to be part of this first one in eight years.

just two statements, first of all i want to push back on mr. scribner's testimony about the way he characterized spending on mass transit. mass transit 28% of that federal highway spending, five times what the commuter mode would share 11 times what it would be with non-commuter and freight. but what's neglected is how many roads and highways are replaced by mass transit. for example virginia railway express runs from fredericksburg to washington, d.c., one full lane on. i think it is the same on i-66 coming in from manassas. if you somehow when we have just one metro line down, the entire city stops. and you just can't move the trucks or the commuters without, or anybody else without mass transit. and in fact if you were to take all the money we put into metro and tried to put it into roads and bridges, there's nowhere to put it. you'd be, just doesn't happen. which also recognizes that cities like washington, new

york, major cities across the country that enjoy transit, are also not discrete economic units. what would new york city be without the subway? those are just people that live in new york city, that's the economic engine for the region, the country, the world. so i think we need to look at it and really integrate it in fashion. the second thing i'd like to just expand on is my friend tom reed from new york talked about should we consider general revenue measures? there seem to be unanimity that we shouldn't decouple user fees from user benefits. so i'd like to argue that we need to think much larger, that we live again, not in discrete economic units. that some old man who lives in alexandria who only walks his dog is nevertheless benefiting from all the freight that comes in by air and by trucks, by the ability of that whole transportation system including broadband and sewers and water systems.

that national infrastructure that we are talking about is not just about getting people to work, it's about making our entire society, our entire economy work. so i hope that we don't cling to this fake linkage between user benefit and user fee. because we really need to think decoupling and we may need to. 25 cents sounds pretty good, but that's 340 billion and we are talking to kelly just to get up to a.b. measure. let me ask, move to a question and the time i have left, nearly every time it rains we have combined sewer overflow. and we had 11 million gallons last year, which is an all- time high. so, mr. diloreto, i think there are eight cities nationwide with this problem. including washington, d.c. which is dumping in the same potomac river. shouldn't cso combined sewer overflow be something we all also look at infrastructure renewal? >> absolutely. and in fact it is included in

our numbers, combined sewers and most major cities in the united states back in the day that's how you treated it. dilution was a solution to pollution. you know? we combine them all, we've since determined that's not the way we ought to be discharging so that's absolutely it's a part of it, it's a part of showing where we have a gap in terms of wastewater and water, we only have a third of the revenue we are going to need to meet our wastewater and water info structure needs by 2025. >> thank you. mr. de la huerta, since you are our resident senior engineer, climate change, we have many hearings up here about more and more extreme weather events, greater existing infrastructure, i won't go through all the hurricanes and floods and droughts, but does your asca work anticipate ever more extreme climate and how we have to prepare for unpredictable moments in our info structure plan? >> absolutely. organizations was possible for a number of standard publications that engineers use and we continually are updating those so the work we

did on stormwater, 1520 years ago, where our tables showed, those tables look totally different today based on new models that were undertaking. our solution to info structure funding includes sustainability and reliability, that's one of the pillars of those three points. >> thank you. mr. trumka? >> you talked so eloquently about the working men and women of america. to be productive and successful they not only have to get to work but also have a stable and reliable home that are a reasonable distance from work. and every major metropolitan area has a shortfall of affordable and available homes. 150,000 housing use it's in metro for you. would you agree affordable housing should also be something we are thinking about as we think about renewing our info structure? >> i would say yes. we personally in the labor movement have a fund, a $6 billion fund where we are trying to do housing particularly in rural areas and low income areas. but if you can't bring people

in or if you can bring people in closer, there's less congestion, less traffic. if you can get them in really close, then you have even more benefit from it. so it is an expanded definition of infrastructure. >> so as you know, we are going to have votes on the house floor so if we can proceed to make sure and get as many questions and so we will not inconvenience the witnesses that would be helpful. the gentleman from pennsylvania mr. evans is recognized to inquire. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and i thank you for your leadership in having this hearing. i'm going to piggyback on something mr. trumka raised. just to report, in 206 the building education, care to report, it was found that high poverty in minorities -- >> can you put your mic? >> in 206, there was a report found that high poverty in minority schools unable to

adequately invest in school facilities. also found that school was predominantly serving white students nearly spent 50% more on capital construction and that those serving minority students spent triple less in terms of that. that came out on the ga report. during this year and we have heard a lot about roads and bridges, while those are vital concerns across our country i think first and foremost, we need to address the infrastructure regarding our public schools. so i'm going to raise that and piggyback directly to mr. trumka and then to mr. dominic because he is president of the chamber exactly what is happening in terms of our schools and we are not talking about school facilities, start out with mr. trumka. >> two things are happening. since the recession the states have spent less and less on our schools, the system, the physical plan of a lot of our

schools particularly in low income and poor areas is crumbling. and it's debilitating to the educational system. when a child is sitting in a room and has to wear a coat and a hat and scarf and gloves, they're not paying attention to learning, they're paying attention to staying warm. so physical plan, raising the wages of teachers, to attract the best and the brightest, is what we should do. and our system is failing right now. there is a bill right now in front of the house, hr 865, the rebuild america's schools act of 2019 which would pump a significant amount of money into our public school system. and into the physical plan so that a kid in rural mississippi or rural pennsylvania or downtown philadelphia can go to a school and have an environment that's conducive to learning, not conducive to just surviving.

>> mr. donovan, i'd like for you to speak to the issue because one of my colleagues raised the question about if you want to beat china, and i heard my colleagues say from wisconsin talked about the infrastructure, from a chamber perspective you want to speak to that issue? >> three things to say. first of all, we need to compete with china. we are trying to do it on the trade issue. we need to do it on the national security issue. and the intelligence issue. and that's going to come out of a lot of committees of the congress of the united states. the second thing is, everybody wants to improve our schools. i'm just talking about facilities right now. and that is a local responsibility, and a national responsibility, where local

cannot adequately handle that and i think that's something that should be considered by the congress of the united states. i'm not sure that i want to put that in the infrastructure in my third point, because at the rate we're discussing infrastructure, we are to have, you know, half of the federal budget of the united states being considered under the infrastructure needs. and we all know we can't do that. decides which, i think if you do, deal with the committees on both the appropriation and the substance side, you get a lot more expertise and i hope the chair man makes sure that the points that have been raised here get to the right people. >> real quick as you know, and you and i have been around for a little while, even richard nixon talked about building school buildings in a debate with john f. kennedy.

so it's rather interesting here we are in 2019 and 21st century, in terms of trying to be competitive, we still got to be kind of hesitant. if you go back to that debate you'll see specifically even nixon spoke about school facilities. 23 seconds for the chairman, want to give any response to that? >> other than saying that nixon lost? to kennedy? some, what we need to do is face up to the reality that a lot of schools have to be fixed. and we have to do it the right way. there is a debate from where we do that. but i think you should keep right on pushing. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> mr. arrington. >> thank you, mr. chairman, thanks witnesses. >> a excuse me. >> mr. chairman, you know, we have to go to the white house and i would like to be excused. >> he would give up time with the chairman of the ways and means committee to go to the white house? >> no. i fully understand that, the

allocation of resources will be much more significant here for a longer period of time. and will be the debate that will take place in the white house. and by the way just to let you no, it is the new committee dealing with jobs and the related issues that are of great concern to your committee. >> if i get the same choice i would opt to stay with this committee. by the way. >> could you take questions from mr. arrington? and then we will -- >> i know you've got to run so i'll just jump right in. first let me just ask that you please, plead to this president who i know has a heart for the forgotten man not just in the rust belt, and the manufacturing sector of our economy but also farmers and ranchers in the ag sector. and i represent 29 rural counties in west texas. and i'd like for you just to

remind everybody involved in infrastructure that if we don't have sustainable communities, we won't have vibrant bag and energy, if we don't have vibrant aggie and energy, we will not have the energy dominance and independence that is of national security import, neither will we have food security, which is of equal national security import. so we, my responsibility representing rural america is to ensure that they are a priority because as you know, they don't have the tax base, they don't have the people as somebody once said, there are more plows, house cows then rural america but the product is precious and we need to make sure we have a system that can efficiently move that product to feeding and clothing the american people and also to export markets. talk about do you believe that's important and are we talking at the table with the

players to ensure that that will be a priority whatever direction and whatever amount of monies we decide to spend on this? >> i've been very involved in the food issues for a long time. very involved in the transportation issues, which are fundamental to the delivery of agricultural products for export and for consumption. and we'll continue to do so. >> thank you, mr. donohue. please make your way to the white house if you need to. you won't offend me. i've got a little under three minutes left. let me connect west texas to the rest of the country by saying, we are at the base of the porch to plains transportation corridor, that is from the largest inland port of laredo, texas, up through my district, lubbock,

texas, max thornberry's district ought amarillo all the way to the canadian border representing 2300 miles of transportation, infrastructure, it's only 5% of the nation's roads, yet it carries over 55% of the vehicles, vehicle miles traveled. again, the backbone, the heartland, and distributing that important product efficiently and safely, do any of the other panelists have a comment about making sure that corridor is like the one i described in middle america and the product that it's carrying to market should be prioritized? and how we prioritize it? >> i just would point to texas and how this committee really looks at an infrastructure bill but also trade policy and texas is a really good example of that, trucks move 76% of

the surface rate, i've been to laredo, 14,000 trucks crossing that border every day. and the amount of pressure that that puts on our infrastructure to serve the other states that neighbor texas and beyond is quite significant. so when you're looking at trade policy, infrastructure policy, they really are very much interconnected and how all the modes feed off of that is really critical. so we've grown over the last few years, to the point where our nation's economy depends on policies that quite frankly cross several issues within this committee's jurisdiction. so i would really encourage you to look creatively at that when you look at both issues. >> that was very eloquent and succinct and, but let me shift to a different issue for mr. scribner. obviously, we've got to be smarter, you've mentioned that in your testimony about how we spend and my question is how would you prioritize what is

national import and priority, how would you go about that because we can't fix everything, we can't modernize every component of the infrastructure system. so how do we determine what is a national priority and then how do we distinguish between the federal, state and local so we make the dollar go the furthest, not to mention all the other improvements we could make on the regulatory front please? >> thank you for that question. i think the interstate highway system should be the priority in all this and i think we should within that, we should prioritize based on freight and movement. i think freight is really that is where you have the federal nexus or at least the strongest federal nexus and where i believe the focus should be. i would point out that taxes last year became the only net donor state under the highway trust fund. since the bailouts began at 2008. we don't have the dynamic we had pre-bailout, but right now

we have texas sending more money to washington and they're receiving out of the federal programs and that should obviously be examined. >> sorry for exceeding my time. >> we'll have mr. snyder inquire and the chair will recess and we'll come back immediately after the third vote. >> thank you and i want to thank the chairman and the ranking member for having this critically important hearing and witnesses for staying and sharing your perspectives. mr. spear, you touched on these are issues, infrastructure is big, complex, and it is in interconnected with literally everything we do in this country economically. in my district, chicago, infrastructure is a top of mind every day issue. for roads, recent report estimated that people in chicago spend 130 hours a year in congestion and traffic. unproductive time lost to the economy. on rail, metro has 840 bridges, 400 of which are more than 100 years old. it's not a current modern infrastructure. on freight, chicago is the

intersection of the country and we see that on rails, roads, it is a real congestion point. and in the communities in my district every time it rains we face flooding. impact of the floodwaters from these guys, can overwhelm our sewer systems. but then river flooding coming from the north can overwhelm communities a second time in just a couple of days. major problem. infrastructure is crucial not just to our future but also to our present. projected as others have said that $3 is returned for every dollar invested in infrastructure, i can make the argument it's even greater than that. but as my colleague from texas mentioned we can't do everything all at once. we try to do it all at once it's a recipe for failure. but if we set priorities and develop a smart strategy, we can begin to do as a nation i don't think there's any challenge we can't overcome. we need to strategically prioritize our investments and close the gap to build with mr. trumka said the modern forward-looking infrastructure that's designed to be

transformative, to be resilient and to be flexible for the future. we need to address the population growth and distribution changes within our nation and our local communities, we have to be prepared to address climate change, the impact of more frequent more intense storms, and anticipating new technologies. where communities are moving. in the context of priorities, i guess mr. diloreto, i'll start with you as a fellow engineer, but ask for the whole panel, what are the most urgent as we should be focusing on, mr. scribner you said traffic but what are the things we have to address now because if we fail to address them the costs are going to be catastrophic down the road. what are the priorities that would give us the highest return put a dollar in today to get more dollars back more quickly so we can invest in new projects and what would be the most transformative? >> well, let me answer your question in this way, one of the things we have not done in our report is advocate for a particular infrastructure category being more important than the other and the reason

i tell you that is because all 16 of them are connected. so for example we could have the best highway system in our country and when those trucks get to the port, they're stuck. they can't go anywhere. we can fix our dams but the levees don't work. what we do is we need a plan but we need a plan unfortunately for all 16 categories because they're so interconnected with one another. you can do it a great wastewater system but the highest uses of electricity and if the electric grid goes down, our sewage is sitting there at the treatment plant waiting to go somewhere. >> i know we have to walk and chew gum at the same time but if we try to do it all at once we get nowhere, we have to take steps. >> i think in each category. >> mr. spear? >> in my testimony i wanted to point to page five which really i think captures from a roads and bridges perspective just 17% of the national highway system miles represents 87% of total truck congestion costs nationwide. so there you have 17%, there's your priority focal point.

and the act does have a national freight program. our proposal is to build america fund, really builds upon that as well by having a national priority program. certain percentage would go to that 17%. the remaining amount would go to local priority programs. we are not dismissing important of rural and connectivity that is really critical. so really looking at the priorities, you can look at congestion and really narrow down where you've got to focus your dollars. >> thank you. >> mr. scribner? >> yeah, i agree with what mr. spears had done in terms of targeting resources, several reports have come out identifying specific widening projects that need to be undertaken due to population growth and truck congestion and looking into things like truck only lanes and certain very congested truck corridors. but absolutely they there are ways. >> in my last second i'd like

to make one pitch, to mr. diloreto although it's not in your bailiwick, rural broadband is critical to our rural communities. infrastructure by definition is enabling, it enables our committee's, it's what's enabled our economy to be doing the global leader in the world, rural rock band has to be a priority for our committee's and i yield back. >> we ask the witnesses to stay. we'll be right back in probably 10 or 15 minutes. . welcome back to order. i want to thank the witnesses for their indulgence. and we would recognize mr. pinedo to inquire. >> thank you, mr. chairman. ranking member brady, gentlemen, thank you for sticking it out, appreciate that. thanks for all your preparation for this type of hearing as well.

my name is jimmy pennetta, from the central coast of california, also known as the salad bowl of the world as you often hear me say. why? because all the agriculture that's there. obviously, because the agriculture, that means basically to continue to be the number 1 industry, we need infrastructure. we need roads. because the main source in that area to get their product out his trucking. obviously. but it's also a main source of how employees get to the fields, get from home and back. as a game prosecutor it was kind of interesting as i was for six years before i took this job, what he saw these kids who had these families, they got into the game because they were looking for that familiar structure that they had growing up. but the parents were too busy either at work or stuck on the roads in traffic and weren't at home. so he saw these kids going into gangs. but also when it comes to agriculture, a key thing is water. as you understand well.

and we get it from above, and we get it from below. doesn't come in from the sierras. basically either it rains and we keep it in our reservoirs, or we stick a straw in the ground and take it out of the aquifers. now, the aquifers which have been pretty strong actually got us to the last couple droughts that were there in california. but the problem is that we sucked a lot out and therefore sucked a lot of seawater in. and a way to combat that is with some recycling plants that we are creating. basically taking a lot of the egg water, wastewater, filtering it, cleaning it and putting it back in the ground as well. also with the reservoirs what they're trying to do and what they realized based on the orville dam and the spillway and the catastrophe that happened up there, they realized we have to replace both spillways as well. so obviously these types of water projects as i'll call them are very important to my area on the central coast.

and my question to you, mr. diloreto, would be, these types of projects, obviously, like i said they're important but how can we move faster on these types of projects, with continuing to make them safer as well? >> right, i think we've talked about it a little but today with respect to how we do permits, and certainly doing a comprehensive assessment as opposed to individual agency helps do that and again i was involved in one where we actually had that opportunity and it went much faster, while letting everybody have an opportunity to comment on the issues that they're concerned about. so that certainly can slow down. the other thing we have found on some of these projects that a federal funding is that the funding comes over a period of a number of years. doesn't just come at once and that creates an uncertainty for the agencies that are doing those projects, are they going to get funding in the next cycle of the budget? as you think about this, we are going to fund these as a project and build them as a project and you know they will happen. >> i guess there's also another project we are working

on speaking of water, called the river there and it floods quite often unfortunately and we are working with the army corps of engineers slowly but surely, working with them, and we are going to be dealing with the funding process and dealing with the budget cost ratio, bcr. unfortunately they don't take into account the value of the field that are in the area as well as the fact there's a lot of low income housing in that area. do you feel that those, there's any way to up that bcr in any way? for those types of -- >> i'm probably not the best to answer that but i'll certainly, something the conversation you have as an elected official with them is critical to help see there's a bigger picture than just one way to approach it. >> exactly, thank you. appreciate that. in projects like this, though, the appropriations is there any other federal funding methods, avenues for these types of projects that you can think of?

>> i think if i'm correct and i wasn't here, you recently passed some projects or some funding for dam safety which certainly helps levees as well as in my case drinking water agencies. those are a piece of the puzzle. as a partnership between local, state, and federal governments that's important. and we count on the federal government to be a partner with the rest of those. so those are the key ones that we've been working on with your staff members as well. >> great, we'll work on them. thank you very much. i yelled back. thank you, mr. chairman. >> i think the gentleman. let me recognize dr. wesley to inquire. >> thank you, mr. chairman, thank you all for being here. i know it's been a long day. mr. spear, you are talking about the time spent in traffic and as a doctor, i got to tell you it was interesting statistic, that doctors are now spending 55 hours a year just logging in. not engaged with patient care, just logging in. it's a similar type of

frustration i guess. we might say. and in one case, we are here to solve something and another case we caused it. but that's another story altogether. that comes across this committee. mr. scribner, you were talking about something that, grabbed my attention when you are, talking about public-private partnerships where the possibilities of things we can do there, you mentioned something about bonds. could you go into detail of that and where it may be taking place and how it's working? >> thank you for that question. we do have, either completed or in under development, about 10 express lane projects and i think this is something where you can look at for public- private partnerships, to sort of trial these out and we are seeing this across the country. but if you're looking at converting your existing high occupancy vehicle lanes into high occupancy toll lanes,

leveraging this private financing is one way to do that at a, that has proven successful across the country in small doses so far but we hope it expands. >> i'm from southern ohio, we have i-75 going across from ohio to kentucky and so there's a debate that's been going on seemingly my entire adult life. about whether can we do it with tolls? people don't want tolls, and you go back and forth, and as i came to congress and got to know this area, what's this easy pass lane? you want to sit in traffic, you can. if you don't you can pay for it. it seems to me that might be the answer we need for our bridge. i would think the trucking industry would say fine, we are going to pay for easy pass and we are going to go right through. those are the types of ideas that i like to hear more about and try to share with people because this seems to me like a good mix. and mr. diloreto, you may want to comment on that as i see you sort of acknowledging

these opportunities that exist. i will tell you, when i was a student in chicago going from cincinnati to chicago, if i didn't want to pay at that time $1 for the skyway, i went around it. so, but we do have opportunities where we can build things that people are willing to pay for. >> well, just to respond to your comment there, i come from a city that is looking at the very thing you're talking about, tolling the existing interstate as a way to try to pay for it and they've raised their tax as well, they did both. there's a lot of unpopularity, amongst people who live there regarding that notion. they can get the sense we need to pay for it, i don't get the sense that it's then that need to pay for it so it's going to be one of the, i think one of the demonstration projects, this one and seattle. >> i guess the other thing that i see, i have companies like procter & gamble and general electric in my district and there's a few things they want.

they want to stay where they are, they want a thriving community, and certainly good economy helps that. but they also need the infrastructure. and so they're looking at it, ways to say how can we engage this helps our business, more efficiency et cetera, et cetera. lowering costs. so has there been any opportunity such as that? where businesses directly get involved with enhanced infrastructure? because it serves their purposes? i mean i-75, that's from michigan to florida. i think it's like 4% of the gdp goes over that bridge every day. >> i know certainly in the state that i live in, we have a charge called the system development charge that allows you to buy into the system it's paid and also for the future, businesses pay that and they pay it understanding that building highways for them, increasing the water line, interviewing the sewer

line, so we've had those partnerships and sometimes they've actually built facilities that we then take so they can use them. it's not, doesn't happen a lot and all the time but there is that recognition. >> thank you. >> i just want to delineate a little bit between new construction and tolling existing roads. because i think it's a really important distinction. nothing gets our back up in our industry trucking really opposes tolling especially on existing roads. we've already paid for. building new infrastructure that is told, it's tolerable within our industry, it's something that we would work with this committee to understand, we share this opinion. what we don't want is being forced into one or the other, we still need access to the non-told roads. and what tolling on existing infrastructure also does and why a lot of thought needs to be put into this is that if your businesses are located at the intersection of that instead, you told that, you're going to put a lot of that

traffic away and it's going to cost jobs, put people out of work. that's real. and you're also putting a lot of 80,000-pound vehicles away from the roads they should be on in the two lane situations where a lot more passenger vehicles are located, a lot more kids are going to school, you do not want that truck traffic deviating into towns on two lane highways. so policy matters. and when we are talking about tolling new infrastructure versus existing, i really think it's important you make that distinction. >> the bridge i'm talking about, they are talking about a new bridge because the other one is falling down. i yield back. >> mr. murphy? >> thank you to the witnesses. i'm proud to represent florida on this committee but i can tell you if my kids brought home a report card that looked like the one florida received from the american society of civil engineers they'd be grounded with no ipad privileges. so it's really unfortunate that that's the state of transportation and infrastructure in florida

given the fact that in my orlando area district, i hear about infrastructure challenges all the time from my constituents. and we all living in that area face it first hand, i can tell you how many hours people spend stuck on i-4. and in part we are a victim of our own success. orlando area is booming, new residents contribute so much to our economy and our social fabric that they put additional pressure on our infrastructure systems. and plus orlando gets more visitors than any other city in the country over 70 million visitors a year. simply put, our infrastructure hasn't kept pace with our growth. and the same thing is happening all across the country. that's why i hope to be part of a bipartisan effort by this committee and other committees to try to pass smart fiscally responsible bill that is equal to the problem at hand. i think there's a real opportunity to get something meaningful done. mr. diloreto, there was recently a piece in the orlando sentinel noting that central florida is home to

many lower income workers desperate for public transportation. folks who struggle to afford rent, and groceries and monthly car expenses. the article observes that despite this high demand, the use of the regions public bus and rail systems is relatively low. because there simply hasn't been enough investment in these systems to make them practical and a convenient option for many working families. unlike mr. scribner, would you agree that robust federal funding for local public transit should be part of any infrastructure package that congress would pass? >> absolutely, we believe it's part of an overall package. there's a 90 billion transit maintenance backlog and certainly all of those communities that's the way many people get to work. some cases the only way you're going to be able to get to work. so it's part of a multimodal system that gets you to and from your job, and in many cases we can't build more roads because we are physically limited by the land we have there.

>> and on another issue, mr. diloreto, i'm concerned about florida's water related infrastructure, we have serious challenges protecting water quality from things like harmful algae blooms. it's bad for the environment, for human health, for tourism car for recreational and commercial fishing and for the broader economy. quite frankly it threatens florida's fundamental way of life. the corps of engineer invests considerable resources throughout the state that can reduce some of these algae blooms. these projects take a long time, and they compete for funding with other national priorities. if congress were as a part of a comprehensive infrastructure package, be able to provide additional investments into this would this improve the corps of engineers ability to execute more quickly on some of these projects? i think we've heard other colleagues of mine expressed some frustration with the speed with which the court executes on its project. >> right, clearly additional investment is one of our first

solutions to solving this d+ grade that our report card got. if the corps of engineers had additional funding they would be able to attack additional projects. they simply can't get to now. so probably concentrating on existing projects and not able to get to these. >> thank you. as you know the federal government invests in surface transportation projects through funding in the form of a formula and competitive grants through financing in the form of loans and loan guarantees. and through favorable tax treatment for things like muni bonds and private activity bonds. you heard me mention my issues traveling on i-4, which is currently being upgraded through public-private partnership supported by a federal loan program. as congress looks to improve our highways to promote commerce and quality of life, should we prioritize funding, financing or tax? >> i think it's a mix of all three and i think it really depends on the project that you're looking at and the location it's at whether it

urban versus rural, agrarian versus see, there's a whole host of elements that i think feed into how you want to construct that type of project and how it's paid for. so i think it's a mix. i listen very carefully to chairman defazio and how he looks at '03's for instance, it really is code for tolling in many instances, it's not at the instance you're talking about at i-4 but a lot of places that is tolling. and it requires throughput and he mentioned that. it's only profitable if you have a high volume of vehicles going through it. and that's actually only profitable on less than 1% of the roads and bridges in the united states. so for roads and bridges, '03 is not the best vehicle. it might be for fixed assets, i don't want to dismiss that. but from our perspective, the best way to do it through a user fee, and then within that user fee, to really prioritize the 17% that i said where the

congestion is, you know where your targets are around the country, we know where the top 100 bottlenecks are, one of them being in your state of course. and you can prioritize that from national priorities and alleviating heavy congestion, that reflects in the prices we pay for projects. but you also can put prioritization in there for local priorities as well. >> thank you. i yield back. >> mr. holding? >> thank you. thank the chairman for this hearing today and i look forward to working with my friends across the aisle, i'm sure we have effective and efficient funding for infection needs. one of the major concerns for me is around the solvency and the direction of the highway trust fund. this fiscal year 2008 revenues flowing to the highway trust fund have been insufficient. and we've had to transfer to address this overspending congress had to transfer $73.3 billion over a seven-year period.

into the fund to cover shortfall. 2015 congress finally passed a long-term reauthorization and with that transferred an additional 71 billion into the highway trust fund to cover the expected shortfall through 2020. while this bill provided stability, and investment, it really didn't address the underlying solvency issues the highway trust fund and in perpetuity. so i've been listening to the testimony today. and i'm pleased there seems to be agreement we need to do something to address the solvency and that we need to create, be creative in order to do this. everything is on the table so to speak. while there has been a number of ideas presented to address revenue, gas tax including the vmt, tolls and user fees among others i think is also important we have a discussion about spending. simply addressing revenue needs without looking at the

whole picture and ensuring funds are being allocated to appropriate projects that meet the purpose of the highway trust fund, would not actually be a creative solution but rather congress continuing this tax and spend policies. you expressed importance of spending smarter and ensuring that allocated funds are actually used for projects of national importance. i really appreciate that part of your testimony and one area highway trust fund that you single out in particular is the mass transit account. which was not originally part of the fund and was added in 1980s. mass transit is currently subsidized by drivers as it receives more than it's fair share of the fuel taxes it, that it pays into the highway trust fund. and further as you note in your testimony, in total around 25% of the fuel tax funding is spent on non- highway related projects. could you expand a bit more on the impact of this diversion

of funds as on the highway trust fund, and do you feel that this type of spending is an appropriate or efficient use of the fuel tax? >> thank you for that question. so, no, i don't think this is an appropriate use of the fuel tax. as you know, the mass transit account as you said was created in the 1980s and this was a way in order to secure votes from representatives who, big cities, who were more concerned about their ailing mass transit systems back then than expanding the highway system for instance. so it was a bit of a horse trade there. and that has stuck with us ever since. i don't think we are getting the value out of it. when you see light rail projects going up in the sunbelt, you have to ask yourself is this the best use of federal funding? streetcar projects across the country. technology that is slower than

buses and costs several times more than that, that is not a wise use of federal funding. so i do think this mission creep has gotten really bad in recent years. and the best thing to do would be for congress to refocus the program on what it was initially intended to do and that was to support these highway corridors and i would go even further and say we should be really looking at these high freight corridors. to meet that nationally significant test. >> thank you. i concur in your opinion. furthering your opinion, are there other areas of highway trust fund spending that we could address in order to rain in perhaps the mission creep and the solvency of the fund? >> i think there should be some examination of how we could better incentivize and i mean the federal government, better incentivize local and state receiving these capital grants, somehow incentivize them to maintain what they

already have because if you let your project decay due to a lack of maintenance, you're not only increasing the cost of eventual reconstruction of those projects and maintenance of them, your providing incentive to not repair them at all because eventually if things go bad enough, you're going to be seeking reconstruction grants which then reopen the door for capital funding. so i think we need to address some of these core incentives as well. >> thank you very much. i yield back, mr. chairman. >> thank you. mr. gohmert? >> thank you, mr. chair. so i actually served in the california legislature before coming to congress and i was there from 2013 to 2017. july of 2017. i actually was the chair of appropriations and also the cochair of the conference committee on infrastructure. so i've already been in this debate once before.

when it comes to how do we fix our crumbling roads, one of the things that i've realized it's the same kind of concerns people have, it's the same arguments they were making at the state level in california. the gas tax hadn't been increased since 1993 in california, same as federal gas tax. i'm curious about what happened, it's a rhetorical question but in 1994 that really kind of, really put off elected officials from taking responsibility for the highways, roads, bridges, infrastructure in general. something did happen. one of the things we are going to have to do is address everybody's concerns one by one. the states that say why should i care about transit? when i don't have transit. why should i care about you know, waterways if i don't have that many waterways? we have to really kind of address people's concerns, if

not, any excuse that people have their going to find a reason why not to vote for an infrastructure package. if a difficult thing to do, i voted on it two days after my primary to come to congress. on a bill that has everything you guys are talking about. you know, increasing the gas tax, a road repair fee, making sure that electric vehicles were paying something as well. so everything you're talking about, we dealt with. the idea that the money at the state level was not being used for roads and infrastructure, that it should be. often times when you look at it, it is in some extent, and i think the american people have a broader sense of roads and infrastructure, they think about it as transportation, when you are like taking a bus, often he walked on the road, take the bus, the bus drops you off, you might jump on to an electric bike or a scooter. right? to get to your next destination.

it's no longer just jump in my car, get out on my driveway, drop off the kids at school and get to work and back. it's more complicated than that and that's why i think i want people to focus, in california, we did it, in l.a. we also increased revenue. one of the things i want to ask is should any infrastructure package include credit for localities that have taken steps to support infrastructure locally, incentivizing localities and municipalities who have done so? california, we did it already, l.a. county we passed measure m on the same night that donald trump took office. what kind of, what should be included in the infrastructure package that says these people are doing the right thing, we should encourage, continue to reward them for that? but also how do you get other states and municipalities to do the same thing?

>> just open question. >> i think you've got to maintain balance between federal, state and other roles, you want to leverage more local participation, private investment, and i think the federal policy level holds a lot of leverage when you are controlling certain percentage of the funding that match. certainly incentivizes the local level to do more, that get more at the federal level so you can have much bigger impact. in terms of the type of project that you're trying to fund. so i'm not one to suggest that you want to hand all authority the state and local level because you're going to be very dismissive of probably more than half of the states of the u.s. that are very reliant on the federal role. i think you've got to maintain a bill up for a balance there, devolution is certainly not going to be beneficial from an interstate commerce point of view. you are essentially going to limit one and half the states

of philippi to raise that kind of revenue on their own. certainly at the local level that's even a bigger problem. and you're not going to have the conductivity for ag states for instance to move their party from central u.s. to the west coast ports. so it's connectivity through a balance between federal, state and local roles. >> you mentioned incentives, local incentives. >> i think you're on to something there, representative. i think we should be finding ways to reward the states who not only maintain their infrastructure to a state of good repair, but also things like cost efficiency, rewarding these states that are trying and finding solutions. because right now i think we often have the priorities backwards. at the federal level. >> i'm out of time. i look forward to continue ace conversation, you never answer all the questions in one hearing but i do appreciate the dialogue. thank you so much. >> thank you. i want to thank especially the

witnesses. as noted philosopher yogi berra once said, it's deja vu all over again. because such as the inn. experience bitter gonzales had in california, similarly in pennsylvania where i was in the state legislature before coming here five years ago, we faced a similar situation. hadn't raised, hadn't had a major transportation bill since early 1990s. successive governors had tried and failed to get something passed. and then in the 2013 time period, after a couple decades of not being able to get it done, you had the head of the pennsylvania chamber of commerce, and the head of the state afl-cio coming in a side- by-side lobby both democrats and republicans, to come

together, do the right thing and finally solve this trouble. because while this is, while the state of our infrastructure as the american council of engineers has shown quite well, while the state of the national infrastructure is approximately d+, unfortunately my state of pennsylvania, that is replicated. so much so that when 60 minutes several years ago did a piece to show the state of america's crumbling infrastructure, the state they came to as exhibit a was pennsylvania. and one of the places they visited was a crumbling part of i-95, in what is now in my district in the city of philadelphia. so i was glad that with the chamber of commerce and with labor, lobbying side-by-side that we were able to bite the bullet, have a bill passed that was meaningful, became

act 89, yes it included revenue increases, which were quite controversial. they made many legislators in both parties nervous. lo and behold the very next election, not one legislator voted for those revenue increases was defeated. not one. so mr. speaker and mr. chairman, this is what we need to do at the national level. i take in all of the above approach, i am rather agnostic on the different options that we have available on the menu, to fund our priorities and yes our priorities and with respect to roads, bridges, rail, but also as it relates to water, sewer, airports, our electrical grid, so many more broadly defined ways that we need to address as part of infrastructure, but let me cite specifically the gas tax.

in real terms, not nominal dollars but in real dollars, the gas tax is approximately 40% lower today than it was a quarter century ago. why in the early 1990s this wasn't indexed to inflation, i have no idea. because much, while not all, much of the problem would have been solved had that simple measure taken place. so we need to finally do this. i am optimistic that this is more than i think any other policy issue, an area where republican president and donald trump and a democratic- controlled house can work together to identify those solutions. but let's be clear, in order to tackle the $1 trillion plus need that is out there, and i know you've cited a bigger figure, in order to tackle

this, it will take real revenue. not a small amount of revenue with crazy projections on how much the private sector can step up. so with the limited time that i have left, i would invite specifically mr. diloreto to comment especially while i focus on the gas tax, if you could address specifically that as a major source at least within the next five to 10 years of the funding that we need? >> i think as you've heard my colleagues on the panel say, the gas tax is one that exists today, we can put it in place and move forward while we try to look at all these other methods that we might want to use. fact is your info structure doesn't care how you fund it and they don't care who pays for it. it's going to fall apart and that's what it's doing right now. it's going to fall apart. the other thing we found is that the comment both of you made and congressman gomez made, 33 states are looking at increasing their gas tax, these are republican-led states and democratic-led states.

honestly respectfully, it's been our united states partner, congress that has failed to participate with us as we tried to do this. kind of why we are here today. >> thank the gentleman. you have the honor of being the closer. >> thank you very much. mr. chairman, to the ranking member, this is a very important hearing and the way that the chairman structured the hearing to have from the very beginning, representation from the chair and the ranking member from the transportation and instructor committee, representatives from the business and labor community. a population has grown by 300,000 residents and that is on top of the growth we experienced and as the state

grows so does the need to expand our transportation and infrastructure needs while the roads and bridges need desperate attention also with the communities broader infrastructure challenges from energy projects to modernizing the schools with airport infrastructure and then to give a d rating on the damn system 154 of nevada's dams are considered to have a high hazard meaning the failure could cause significant property damage. we have stormwater infrastructure needs and the shortfalls during the next ten years plus the mitigation projects and those that

require modernization so that said nevada has over 30000 miles of roadways that require attention. more than 500 bridges are 50 years old requiring approximately $133 million for repair roads and bridges that our deficient costing three.2 billion dollars annually. to address the region when i was in the state senate previously from their legislatures from interstate 11 and working hard to bring that project to its full development and this would

help to enact mexico into the fourth district. we all agree it's good to see you again and thank you for the time you're spending with us to ensure strong investment of the nation's infrastructure the chairman testified this morning as they craft the elements of the bill to give serious thought to prioritization from the roads and highways and bridges perspective every year what the top hundred ball the next are we know where they are we track them every year with the gps data those that our responsible for the data and it is invaluable because it allows to look immediately to

see the congestion and the choke holds if we are sitting in traffic losing 74.$5 million per year just in the trucking industry we are only 4 percent of the vehicles on the road but moving 71 percent of domestic freigh freight, think of what we pay for food and beverages and close anything we buy is reflected in the congestion it transcends down to the consumers so you are having a dramatic impact on the economy with everyday consumers pay for everyday things by alleviating congestion with those bottlenecks that is the immediate priority i would recommend to focus on. >> as has been mentioned including several states have enacted plans using municipal bonds to fund the capital projects there is a model to get these done and when i served in the state we brought the business community and labor together to find these needed projects so what are

your general thoughts to use bond as a funding method quick. >> as a former city engineer they were one of the biggest sources for capital we would sell the bonds and keep a source of funding we could get which would translate that that could be paid for the projects it is critical they remain a tool. >> i yelled back. >> as we gather a committee we don't always see eye-to-eye particularly in this rule that we all agree it is a worthwhile goal in working with our colleagues defined real world solutions will help the communities for economic securities and in particular to do a superb job looking at four and a half hours of

witness testimony going back and forth i just move no hostilities were made the members are advised they have two weeks to submit written questions we ask you to answer those for the record and they will be made part of the formal hearing record and with that we are adjourned and thank you to the witnesses again we are adjourned and thank you to the witnesses again. [inaudible conversations]

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